Art News Headlines 2012 • London • Paris • New York • Beijing

Bookmark this page for fine arts headlines and cultural news stories from around the world, plus exhibition reviews, newspaper articles, plus the latest sale auction prices from Sotheby's and Christie's. We cover the latest X-ray discoveries about the painterly techniques of Old Masters (like Leonardo, Caravaggio and Michelangelo), modern artists (like Picasso, Van Gogh, and Modigliani), as well as contemporary artists (like Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Damien Hirst). Look out for our coverage of the latest arts festivals, and competitions (like the Turner Art Prize), plus reviews of temporary shows at the best art museums such as the Louvre, Musee d'Orsay, the Uffizi, Rijksmuseum, Pinakothek, Tate Modern, as well as the Met, MoMA, Guggenheim and Whitney, in New York. We also feature stories about wealthy art collectors within the industry, and the world's most expensive paintings. Join our community of regular visitors and keep up to date with the global art world.



Art News Headlines 2012

Jan 1, 2012: Kippenberger Cleaned Out
Looking back on 2011, we empathize with the cleaner (turned contemporary art critic) at the Ostwall Gallery in Dortmund who inadvertently ruined a $1 million modern installation sculpture by the controversial postmodernist artist Martin Kippenberger (1953-97). Apparently she scoured a 'dirty' trough whose 'dirt' was actually paintwork depicting a dried-out puddle of rain-water.

December 18: Bingham's Centenary
2011 was the 200th anniversay of the birth of George Caleb Bingham (1811-79), the great Missouri painter who specialized in landscape paintings of the American frontier. Along with other artists like Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington and others, Bingham brought East coast art-lovers face-to-face with the American wilderness. His most famous picture is Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

December 11: New Portrait by Rembrandt
X-ray imaging has revealed that an unknown oil-on-panel painting is in fact a work by the great Dutch Realist portraitist Rembrandt (1606-69). The work, entitled Old Man with a Beard, shows an old man with a white beard, and is believed to have been executed by the artist around 1630.

December 6: Martin Boyce Wins Turner Prize
The installation-sculptor Martin Boyce, aged 44, was announced on Channel 4 TV last night as the winner of this year's Turner Prize for contemporary art. The Emperor's new clothes look fabulous. Boyce's installation takes up a whole room and contains various pieces which are reminiscent of a public park. There are trees (the pillars which support the gallery ceiling), leaves on the floor (cut from paper) and an angular park bin and park bench. He was inspired by the designers Joel and Jan Martel who created a modernist garden, complete with concrete trees in Paris in 1925. Judges believe that Boyce reinvents the language of early modern art. (Are they joking or what?) For details of past competitions, see: Turner Prize-Winners (1984-2011).

November 29: Leonardo Self-Portrait on Show
A drawing by the High Renaissance artist, Leonardo da Vinci, is currently on show at an exhibition celebrating the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification in Turin, Italy. Shown in public only twice before, in 1929 and 2006, the drawing is the only self-portrait accredited to the artist,and is being displayed inside a special shock-proof glass case filled with sensors. The drawing is housed in the Royal Library in Turin and is insured for a sum of €50 million.

November 23: German Picture Returned to Berlin
A 15th century oil-on-oak painting has been returned to a Berlin Museum by the University of Indiana, more than 60 years after it was stolen by a British soldier in the aftermath of World War II. The picture is one of a number of masterpieces by an unknown painter of the Cologne School during the 1480s. Both the University or the museum have described the work's value to art history as "priceless."

November 16: Records Tumble at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art
The 1961 painting "I Can See the Whole Room! and There's Nobody in It!", by the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97), sold yesterday for $43 million, a record for the artist. Other records included the sale of a bronze spider by sculptor Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) for $10.7 million, as well as a photograph by the German artist, Andreas Gursky (b.1955) for $4.3 million - making it the costliest item of fine art photography in history.

November 1: Russian Icon Paintings Repatriated
Seventy religious icons have been donated to the Russian Orthodox Church by a Russian property developer. Sergei Shmakov spent a year abroad tracking down the icon paintings, valued at $1 million, which were taken out of Russia after the Revolution. The icons were found at auctions, antique shops and markets in a number of countries and include a rare mid-18th century icon entitled St John the Theologian in Silence depicting the apostle composing his Gospel, with his fingers over his lips and an angel peering over his shoulder. The Russian culture minister has said that Shmakov's donation was an act of "great patriotism" and that the people of Russia appreciated the return of not only sacred, but "cultural treasures, works of art."

27 Oct: Export Ban on Guardi Painting
Venice, a View of the Rialto Bridge, Looking North, from the Fondamenta del Carbon, a painting of the Rialto Bridge by Italian painter Francesco Guardi, in the manner of Canaletto and Bellotto, has had a temporary export ban placed on it by the British Arts Minister, Ed Vaizey. The work of art was sold for a record £26.7 million to an unknown buyer by Sotheby's of London earlier this year. It is hoped that by delaying the granting of an export licence, it will give time for someone to come up with the money to keep the painting in Britain.

20 Oct: Online Art Fair 2012
Almost one hundred exhibitors have already registered for the online VIP Art Fair which goes live from the 3-8 February, 2012. The VIP Art Fair was launched in January, 2011 amid huge hype but the reality proved disappointing for both the 190 art dealers and their 9,000 works, as well as potential buyers. The site is the brainchild of New York art dealers James and Jane Cohen and the idea behind it is to reduce the costs associated with regular exhibitions and art fairs. Their aim is also to make more accessible and to showcase a wider number of artists than would be possible in any one venue.

12 Oct: Ceramics at Sotheby's
A major auction of ancient ceramics from Persia, Iraq and Central Asia (including part of Harvey Plotnick's huge collection of medieval Islamic pottery) was held last week at Sotheby's, London, with disappointing results. Expecting sales revenues of around £18-22 million, the auction actually generated £8.5 million, with between 30-44 percent of items failing to find buyers, including a 13th century Khurasan silver-inlaid brassewer. Demand was brisk, however, for medieval Islamic items of clothing with one item - a regal post-Sassanian silk shirt from central Asia, woven with blue, cream and honey silk - selling for £713,250.

Sept 28: Jack B Yeats Painting Sells for €1 million in Ireland
A Fair Day, Mayo (1925), an oil painting by Jack B. Yeats, was hammered down for €1 million at Adam's sale of Important Irish Art in Dublin (against a pre-sale estimate of €500,000-€800,000 – the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting in Ireland. Previously owned by Eamon de Valera, among others, it was sold to an anonymous collector, although it is believed that it will remain in Ireland. For full details of other record-breaking pictures by Irish painters, see: Most Expensive Irish Paintings.

Sept 28: Record Sales of Asian Art at Christie's
Christie's of New York racked up record sales of $75 million at their recent Asia Week auctions. ($38 million from Chinese art; $7.3 million from modern and contemporary Indian and Southeast Asian art.) By comparison, Sotheby's made £31.5 million, mostly from Chinese paintings, sculpture and ceramics.

Sept 26: Hidden Goya Picture Uncovered
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has discovered a 'hidden' portrait by the Spanish Old Master Goya, lying underneath his Portrait of Ramon Satue (1823). The concealed image, which was discovered using scanning macro x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, is an early portrait of an unknown Spanish general. The technique used to make this discovery is very new and has been developed by the Universities of Antwerp and Delft.

Sept 25: $11.4 million Chinese Masterpiece Might Be a Fake!
A painting, sold by the Jiuge International Auction House last year, as a masterpiece by the Chinese 20th century painter Xu Beihong, is now thought to be a fake. The oil on canvas nude, which sold for $11.4 million, was listed as a study of the artist's wife painted in 1920. The work was authenticated for the auction house by the artist's son, Xu Boyang. Best known for his ink on paper works, Xu Beihong is ranked by Artprice as one of the top ten artists, based on auction value, with sales in excess of $176 million. Having travelled to Paris in the 1920s to study Western Art, Beihong was a Chinese pioneer in the use of oil on canvas. The controversy has emerged thanks to an open letter which was recently published by a group of former students at Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts. The letter stated that the painting was actually painted by one of them in 1983, thirty years after the artist's death, as part of an art class exercise. They cannot say who of them painted the picture, which is of a life-drawing model, as it was done while the whole class copied the classic realistic style of Beihong and his peers. A number of Chinese experts have confirmed that the painting is not of Jiang Biwei, Beihong's wife and some have declared that the painting bears no resemblance to Xu's style. According to the Chinese Global Times, neither the auction house, nor the artist's son are prepared to comment on the students claim.

Sept 10: Stolen Oil Drawing Recovered
An oil sketch by the Flemish Baroque painter Rubens, stolen from the Ghent Fine Arts Museum over a decade ago, has been found in Greece. Two people have been arrested. Statements from the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Greek police, indicate that the work is a 11x20-inch Flemish painting, entitled The Hunt for the Caledonian Wild Boar (1618). The work was confiscated by undercover police posing as buyers, after it was offered to them for €6 million, despite being worth only €200,000.

Sept 4: Graffiti Art the Hamptons
Stencilled paintings by the world's most famous street artist, Banksy, were recently shown at an exhibition at the Keszler Art Gallery in the Hamptons. Originally the works had been spray-painted onto walls in Bethlehem by Banksy, in 2007. According to the Gallery, all the pieces on display were legally purchased. Apparently, the British art dealer Robin Barton bought them (attached to over 5 tons of concrete) from two Palestinian art dealers who had tried to sell them on the Internet.

Aug 25: Four Paintings By Still To Be Auctioned
Four major works of art by the American Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still (1904-1980) - co-founder with Mark Rothko (1903-70) and Barnett Newman (1905-70) of Colour Field painting - are to be auctioned by Sothebys. The right to auction these paintings has been given to Sothebys by the city of Denver and are secured by a $25 million guarantee. According to experts, because it is so rare to find a work by Still offered at auction, they are likely to sell for many million dollars over the guarantee price. Three of the paintings were completed in the 1940s and one dates from 1976. The Clyfford Still Museum, which houses 2,400 works from Still's collection is due to open later this year. The paintings which are to be auctioned were bequeathed to the Museum by Patricia Still, Clyfford's late wife, and do not have the restrictions which are attached to Still's own bequest.

Aug 20: Rembrandt Heist Solved
Last week, in a meticulously-planned heist, thieves in California grabbed a pen-and-ink drawing by the Dutch portrait painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) from the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey, California. The drawing, entitled The Judgment (c.1655) was valued at $250,000. Two days later, following an anonymous tip-off, the work of art was recovered from a Church in the San Fernando valley.

Aug 16: Warhol's Eggs Coming to the Tate St Ives, UK
Andy Warhol's little known silkscreen print Eggs (1982) is to be shown in the UK for the first time this autumn. One of 25 egg paintings completed by the artist, it will be the main attraction at the Tate St Ives Autumn exhibition entitled The Indiscipline of Painting which will feature works from the 1960s up to the present by 50 British, American and European contemporary artists.

Aug 2: Restoration of Carracci's Farnese Frescoes
Four centuries after Annibale Carracci dazzled Rome with his ceiling frescoes in the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese (c.1596-1601), a €1 million fund has been raised to clean them up. Regarded as the start of Baroque painting, Carracci's murals set new standards in ceiling decoration. The forthcoming restoration promises to return much of their original splendour.

July 30: Art Theft: Police Recover Picasso Artwork
A man caught on video camera has been charged with stealing a sketch by Picasso entitled Tete de Femme (Head of a Woman) from the Weinstein Gallery, as reported below. When police entered his home in New Jersey, they found eleven other works of art which had disappeared from a number of venues in New York City over recent times.

July 20: Wildenstein Institute Controversy
Missing Impressionist masterpieces worth millions of euros have been unearthed in the vault of the Wildenstein Institute in Paris. As a result, Guy Wildenstein, the wealthy French art dealer, has been charged with fraud. In response, Wildenstein has claimed that the presence of the lost works is due to "an oversight" by his late father, who established the Institute after making a fortune buying and selling Impressionist paintings.

17 July: Gala-Dali Foundation Acquires Surrealist Masterpiece
The Foundation Gala-Salvador Dali in Spain, a private cultural institution created in 1983 at the express wish of the Surrealist artist Salvador Dali, and presided over by him until his death in 1989, has acquired an oil-on-panel work by the artist entitled Enigmatic Elements in a Landscape. A major surrealist work from 1934, the Foundation purchased this from a private owner for 7.8 million Euros. The Foundation, named after Dali's wife, Gala Dali, has been acquiring works by the artist for a number of years with the aim of making the museum an essential place for understanding the life and works of Salvador Dali. The painting's central figure is that of the Dutch realist artist Jan Vermeer who was a major influence on Dali throughout his career and indeed features in several of his paintings. In the work, Vermeer is shown painting while Dali himself is portrayed as a boy, dressed as a sailor, holding a hoop and a bone and being attended by a nursemaid. This work has reportedly been exhibited only twice since the 1930s.

July 9: New Da Vinci Painting Unearthed
Art experts are agog following the authentication of a previously unknown painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Entitled Salvator Mundi, the painting - which is owned by a consortium of art dealers - has been examined by curators at the Met in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, as well as by a number of Da Vinci scholars in London. The rare painting - asking price, reportedly $200 million - will be on display at the Da Vinci Exhibition in London later this year.

7 July: San Francisco Art Heist
Head of a Woman, a sketch by Picasso valued at $200,000, was stolen from the Weinstein Gallery in San Francisco. The framed drawing was hanging near the entrance to the Gallery and it appears that a man in his early-30s walked in and simply took it off the wall. He then made his getaway by hailing a taxi! The sketch, which was drawn in 1962 is part of the Maurice Bresnu Collection. Bresnu was chauffeur to the artist and received a number of drawings as gifts from him. Police believe it will be difficult for the thief to sell the work as it is registered in the database of the Weinstein Gallery and they will be searching art markets worldwide to recover it.

July 1: Art On The Move
The Barnes Foundation which houses an exceptional collection of European Modern Art is moving it's collection, valued at $25 billion, to a new home near the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Four thousand works of art, including 108 Renoirs, which is the world's largest single group, 69 paintings by the French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne and 59 works by Henri Matisse, the French leader of Fauvism who made enormous contributions to the theory and practice of colour in painting. Included in the move will be Matisse's largest work, the mural painting known as "The Dance II". Other famous paintings being moved, include: Picasso's Woman with a Cigarette, Cezanne's Bathers and his largest version of The Card Players, Van Gogh's Postman and numerous paintings by Modigliani, Degas, Seurat, Gauguin and Monet, to name but a few. The foundation also houses a collection of Primitive Art including a significant number of African sculptures. The move comes after a decade long legal battle between those who wanted to relocate the collection to a larger premises and those who wished to maintain the vision of the gallery's founder, Albert C Barnes, limiting public access and allowing the school to use the art collection for study purposes.

June 29: Record Sale at Sotheby's
Sothebys achieved the highest ever total sales (over £108 million), for any sale of Contemporary Art in London. A major contributing factor was the Duerckheim Collection of German Art from the 1960s and 1970s, which sold for over £60 million. Top lots included Crouching Nude (1961) by Francis Bacon (£8.3 million); Untitled by the graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (£5.4 million); and a silkscreen portrait of Debbie Harry (£3.7 million) by Andy Warhol.

June 28: Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art
Francis Bacon's Study for a Portrait made the top price of $25 million at Christie's auction of contemporary art this week. Another heavy-hitter was Mao (1973) by Andy Warhol which sold for $11.1 million. A number of drawings and paintings by British artist Lucian Freud, were also well received: His drawing, Woman Smiling (1958) sold for $7.5 million.

June 28 to September 25: Antonio Lopez Garcia in Madrid
An exhibition of the works of Spanish artist, Antonio Lopez Garcia, which includes oils, drawings and sculptures of interiors, still life, and projects including several busts of his grandchildren takes place in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid this summer. Painter and sculptor, Antonio Lopez Garcia (b.Jan 1936), whose work initially displayed a surreal quality, is known mainly for his realistic style. By the late 1950s, like many other artists of the time, his portraits, landscapes and seascapes were devoid of any surrealistic qualities. A highly versatile realist, Antonio Lopez Garcia is proficient in a variety of media including oil painting, pencil drawing, bas-relief in plaster and wood carvings. On display are representations of the human figure, a motif central to his works in both sculpture and drawing which highlight his continued use of classical proportion. A large number of the works of art on display will come from private collections and some, owned by the artist himself, are still unfinished.

June 23, 2011: Reclusive Heiress Leaves $400 million To Arts
Heiress to a copper mining fortune, Huguette Clark has died at the age of 104 and has left her estimated estate of $400 million to a foundation which promotes the arts. The Bellosguardo Foundation will also receive Ms Clark's 42 room Fifth Avenue apartment, said to be the largest apartment in New York as well as the dozens of paintings which hung on the walls, including works by John Singer Sargent, Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and William Merritt Chase. Also included is a Stradivarius violin and rare first editions of the book Paradise Lost by Milton. The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is to receive a Water Lilies (1907) by Claude Monet which has not been seen by the public since 1925. Ms Clark's father handed his entire art collection to the Corcoran after his death in 1925. Ms Clark was briefly married in the 1920s but after a divorce moved into her Fifth Avenue apartment with her mother. When her mother died in 1963, she continued to live there, although was seldom ever seen in public again.

June 18, 2011: Sotheby's Paris Art Sale Achieves New Records
Sotheby's Paris set several new records during their recent sale of Old Master and 19th Century Paintings this week. The first was the $4 million for a Portrait of a Young Woman in an Interior Holding a Glass by Dutch painter and engraver Cornelis Pietersz Bega (or Cornelis Pietersz Begijn) (1632-1664). Another record was the $170,000 for Village Square by French artist Nicolas-Antoine Taunay (1755-1830). Taunay was best known for his landscapes having studied from the age of 13 with artists like the Italian painter Francesco Giuseppe Casanova (1727-1803), whose landscape and history paintings inspired Taunay's own subject matter. A third world record was achieved for a work by French artist Alphonse-Henri Perrin (1798-1874), whose Gardens of the Villa Medici in Rome sold for $241,000, more than six times it's estimate. Popular 19th century painting and drawing included works by leading French landscapists. Two canvases by the great romantic French artist Camille Corot (1796-1875), who was a pivotal figure in landscape painting, were on sale: Archway/Auteuil, which tripled it's $70,000 estimate to sell for $232,536 while Souvenir of Normandy (Sunset) sold for $163,954. The French State also intervened to secure two paintings: one by Flemish artist Michele Desubleo (1602-1676) who worked in Central and North Italy during the Baroque era. Desubleo's Allegory of Music sold for $100,515, twice it's estimate. The French State purchased this painting on behalf of the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg. Diana Returning from the Hunt by the French rococo artist, Jean-Francois Le Moyne (1688-1737) was purchased for $652,000 - more than twice its pre-sale estimate. This work of art will be returned to it's original home, the Hotel Biron in Paris, now the Rodin Museum.

June 13, 2011: Asian Art Grosses $6.1 Million
Antiques and Fine Art Auction House, Skinners, grossed over $6.1 million at their recent Asian Works of Art auction in Boston. The majority of bidders came from China with a significant amount of pieces sold via online bidding. A bamboo brush pot from 18th century China sold for $539,500 and a rhinoceros horn libation cup for $250,000. Chinese paintings continue to remain popular with a painted fan by artist Wu Changshuo selling for $34,365.

June 12, 2011: 4 Year Old's Paintings Sell For $25,000
Artist Aelita Andre from Melbourne has been touted as the new Picasso by the art world. The abstract expressionist painter had her first New York solo exhibition this month at the Agora Gallery in Manhattan. All this would be exciting for any artist, but particularly so when they are only 4 years old! Andre's father, a professional abstract artist, claims his daughter was creating her first works at the age of 6 months. In 2009, when she was 2, one of her paintings sold for $22,000 at a group exhibition in Hong Kong.

June 6, 2011: Russian Artist Ilya Repin Still a Top Seller
Christie's auction house claimed a new auction record for their sale of a painting by Russian artist Ilya Repin. Repin’s 1875 oil painting A Parisian Cafe sold for £4.5 million at the start of Russian Art Week in London. The large canvas depicts a bustling cafe crowd and had only been expected to make £3.5 million. Auctioneers mentioned that the increase in oil prices was creating more billionaires in Moscow who were able afford such works of art.

June 4, 2011: Irish Art A-Listers Continue To Sell
Irish artists Paul Henry and Jack B Yeats still lead the way at Irish art sales. A small oil landscape painting of the West of Ireland by Henry sold for €106,000 at a Whyte's auction in Dublin this week. At rival auctioneers Adams, an oil on board by Yeats entitled 'The Westering Sun' fetched €135,000, the highest price paid for any Irish art work in 2011 to date.

May 30, 2011: Graffiti Artists Vs The Law
'Art in the Streets' is a new and highly successful exhibition of graffiti art running at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art until August 8th. The show is on track to break all attendance records with a reported 22,000 visitors in the first week alone. The museum appears to have attracted a new audience to the venue, but in the meantime also caused a controversy in the local community. According to the LA police, there has been an enormous increase in vandalism in the local area, particularly by young taggers. So much for populist postmodernist art.

May 29, 2011: Sculptor Anish Kapoor at the Grand Palais in Paris
Anish Kapoor unveiled a mammoth installation, his largest and most ambitious sculpture to date at the Grand Palais in Paris. Entitled Leviathan, the sculpture is made from 16 tonnes of PVC plastic and resembles giant bowling balls. The artist prefers to describe them as biomorphic forms of 4 connected orbs. Visitors can walk inside the orbs, which Kapoor says have a 'cathedral-like quality'. Known for his perfection, the Indian born artist says he worked the design down to the last millimeter. The computer design for the project was carried out in the UK, a German company produced the PVC, it was stitched together in Italy and a crew from Czech installed the work. Although highly modern, the artist claimed his intention was to create something integrally primal. Commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, the sculpture cost €3 million to make. It will be on display until June 23.

March 1: Most Expensive Painting Ever Sold - Goes On Display
Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) has gone on display at London’s Tate Modern. This is the first time in 60 years that it has been on public view. This iconic fine art painting sold last year at Christie's Auction in New York to a private buyer. It fetched $106.5 million which makes it the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction. It beat the previous record holder: sculpture Walking Man 1 by Giacometti which 3 months previously fetched $104.3 million. The most expensive painting ever purchased however (outside of auction) is still $140 million reportedly paid by David Martinez in 2006 for No 5 (1948) by Jackson Pollock. Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust is one of a series of paintings the artist created depicting his muse at the time Marie-Therese Walter. It is painted in his classic Cubist style and is on display in the new Pablo Picasso room at the Tate Modern.

January 20: Modern British Sculpture at the Royal Academy
Running from Jan 22 to April 7, this is a massive retrospective of plastic art in Britain, from the late 19th-century to the year 2000. Featured sculptors include Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo, Anthony Caro, plus minimalists like Carl Andre, as well as contemporary sculptors and installationists including Damien Hirst, Richard Long, Julian Opie, and Jeff Koons.

Jan 1: Irish Arts Council Budget Cut by Only 5 Percent!
Irish art can relax! The Irish Arts Council - Ireland's lead agency for the arts - has been allocated a hefty €65.2m for 2011, which represents no more than a 5 percent cut on 2010 figures. However, whether this will force the Council to eliminate its grants to loony minority "art" groups remains to be seen. The artists' tax exemption has been been capped at €40,000 per annum, down from €125,000, though why someone who (say) creates textile art should receive more generous tax treatment than (say) a trainee tailor, is utterly beyond me.

How to analyze a painting? See our educational essays: Art Evaluation and How to Appreciate Paintings.

Art News Headlines 2010

December 6: Tate Britain - Susan Philipsz Wins 2010 Turner Prize
Susan Philipsz, a Glaswegian sound installation artist now living in Berlin has won the prestigious Turner Prize for contemporary art. This is the first time that the prize - one of the best known in the world - has been awarded to a sound artist. Of course, whether a sound recording belongs in a visual arts competition is - to put it mildly - a moot point.

November 12: Jack B Yeats Painting Makes €412,000 at Christie's
At Christie's 20th-Century British and Irish Art auction last night, A Horseman Enters a Town at Night (1948) by Jack B Yeats sold for £349,250 (€412,000) against a pre-sale estimate of £300-500,000. Never seen in public before, the painting had once been purchased by the writer Graham Greene for his apartment in Paris. Despite the downturn, the greatest Irish artists (Jack B Yeats, William Orpen, John Lavery, Francis Bacon, William Scott and Louis le Brocquy) continue to sell well.

November 12: World Record For Chinese Qianlong Vase
A west London auction house left Sotheby's and Christie's in the shade by selling a 16-inch high Chinese vase for a world record £43 million net. One of the most important examples of Chinese pottery to go on sale this century, the 18th-century Qianlong dynasty porcelain vase was discovered in a house clearance in a suburban home in neighbouring Pinner. In the saleroom it sparked a bidding war between several Chinese buyers and smashed its pre-sales estimate of £800,000 to £1.2 million.

November 11: New York - Warhol's Pop Art is the New Currency
On Monday, Men in Her Life (1962), Andy Warhol's multi-painting of Elizabeth Taylor sold for $63 million at auction house Phillips, de Pury and Company. On Tuesday, Coca-Cola (1962) a black-and-white picture of (you guessed it) a large Coca-cola bottle by the same artist was snapped up for $35 million at Sotheby's. On Wednesday, Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (1962) also by Warhol went for $24 million. These sales now firmly establish Warhol as the late-20th century counterpart to Pablo Picasso, and come hard on the heels of two other Warhol successes - the reported private sale of Eight Elvises (1963) for $100 million, in 2009; and the auction of Green Burning Car I (1963) for $71.7 million, in 2007. [For more, see: Top 20 Most Expensive Paintings.]

September 29: Art Now the Most Popular Passion Investment
With the number of global millionaires growing by some 17 percent in 2009, according to a report by Merrill Lynch & Co, and financial markets awash with cash but nowhere safe to invest it, it's no surprise that art has become the most popular type of "passion investment": witness records set by Warhol (Dec 2009), Giacometti (Feb 2010), Picasso (May), and Rubens (July). But is art really a hedge against inflation? Yes, say the experts. A recent publication, "Economics and Politics of Cultural Heritage" (Forte and Mantovani) demonstrated that between 1977 and 1996 the net return on investments in 4 genres was as follows: Expressionist (5.98 percent); Surrealist (5.9 percent); Art Informel (8.9 percent); and Pop Art (11.75 percent). Even so, it's important to be aware that the art market does not publicize its failures, which can affect even the most blue-chip artists. For example, Renoir's Bal au moulin de la Galette (bought for $78 million) was reputedly resold for $50 million. Monet's The Beach at Trouville (1870), was sold at Sotheby's in 2000, for £11m. But, in Sotheby's in 2006 it failed to find a buyer. Rubens' A Portrait of a Man as the God Mars (1620-25), sold at Sotheby's in July 2000 for £4.98m. Reappearing again at Sotheby's in 2002, the work sold for £4.4m, making a loss of half a million pounds. Even matchless works such as Cezanne's Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier and Van Gogh's Irises have re-sold at a loss.

August 6: Who is Popular at Auction?
2010 has proved to be far from dull in the fine art salesrooms. Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) has been confirmed as the highest selling female artist at auction after her Espagnole (1916) sold for £6.4 million, beating her previous record of £5.5 million for Les Fleurs. Her success has been repeated throughout the school of Russian art, as dealers and collectors invest in cheaper artists. Last year's favourites, artists from China and India, are still selling well, but right now Russian painting is in the driving seat. Meantime, Old Masters, always reliable investments in a recession, also continue to do well - witness recent records for Rubens and Rembrandt. The highest selling male artist at auction is now Picasso (with three works in the Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings), followed by Van Gogh (also with three). The recent sale of Eight Elvises (1963) for $100 million, makes Andy Warhol the top-priced American artist. In fact, both Picasso and Warhol have consistently been among the top sellers since 2002.

August 1: Yorkshire Monument to Barbara Hepworth
Opening next Spring in Wakefield is a new £35m exhibition space devoted to Barbara Hepworth (1903-75), the town's most illustrious daughter. On completion, the David Chipperfield-designed Hepworth Wakefield will be the largest purpose-built exhibition space outside London, and it is hoped that the gallery will attract 150,000 visitors a year. In addition to Hepworth's own works, the exhibit includes works by Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron, Graham Sutherland and others. But as an inspiration to other women artists, Hepworth has few peers. She was one of the 20th century's most important abstract artists, and became part of the European avant-garde, visiting Picasso, Constantin Brancusi and Mondrian in their studios. All this while at the same time marrying and divorcing two ambitious male artists, (and loving a third), and raising four children. The Wakefield gallery is the second monument to the artist, after The Tate collection of Hepworth's work at St Ives, Cornwall.

July 23: The Garima Gospels - Oldest Illuminated Manuscript - Ethiopia
Radiocarbon dating tests conducted recently at the Oxford University Research Laboratory for Archaeology, have dated two volumes of illuminated manuscripts - found in a remote Ethiopian monastery and known as The Garima Gospels - to 487-488 CE (between 330 and 650 CE). This makes them the oldest Christian illuminated manuscripts ever found. The next oldest gospel manuscripts are the Rabbula Gospels in Syriac, completed in 586 CE and now kept in the Laurentian Library in Florence. The Garima Gospels are a unique work of early religious art and pre-date all other such works from sub-Saharan Africa by more than 500 years. They have never left the monastery, and legend links their creation to the time of Father (Abba) Garima, the founder of the monastery, a native of Constantinople, who arrived in Ethiopia around 494 CE. The 28 pages of illuminations are designed in the early Byzantine style, and - like those in the Rabbula Gospels - were probably created in a Syrian or Jerusalem monastery. The text (written in Ge'ez, the ancient Ethiopian language) seems to have been added after the illuminations were finished.

May 6: Are the Art Markets Bouncing Back?
It's encouraging to see Christie's hosting a world record auction price for Picasso's Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) ($106.5 million). And while incorrigible optimists may interpret this as a sign that the recession in the art market is over, realists will say that it merely confirms the value of the Picasso marque, along with the added value which attaches to rarely seen masterpieces. On the other hand, the present environment is surely an excellent time to buy quality art: prices for blue-chip paintings are low, while alternative investments are still volatile. True, sellers remain reticent, with noticeably fewer top quality artworks at Sotheby's and Christie's, but New York auction receipts are significantly up (Sotheby's by 300 percent over 2009) and even if most lots are selling within their heavily reduced pre-sale estimates, interest is slowly beginning to build. What remains unclear, is precisely which sectors of the art market have been worst affected, and which are likely to emerge relatively unscathed. Andy Warhol, the epitome of post-war modernism, whose screenprint Eight Elvises set tongues wagging when it reportedly sold for $100 million by private treaty in 2009, is now a solid member of the mega-seller artist club - as too are the great 19th century painters like Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh.

May 4th: New World Record for Picasso at Christie's
Total sales revenue at Christie's New York Impressionism and Modern Art sale were $336 million, which was near the top end of estimates. Pride of place went to The semi-abstract painting Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932) by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), which was hammered down for $106.5 million, making it the world's most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. The record price narrowly exceeded the $104.5 million paid in February 2010 for the sculpture Walking Man I by Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966).

February 3: Sotheby's Achieves World Record Price for Work of Art
L'Homme Qui Marche I (Walking Man) the life-size bronze sculpture cast in 1961 by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) sold this evening at Sotheby's in London for a world record price of £65,001,250 ($104,327,006). More than five times higher than its pre-sale estimate of £12m-18m, the price exceeded the $104,168,000 paid for Picasso's Garcon a la Pipe at Sotheby's New York in 2004. Competitive bidding and scarcity of sculptures by Giacometti were key factors in determining the outcome. Other masterpieces hammered down at Sotheby's Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art included Kirche in Cassone by the Viennese Sezessionist painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), which sold for £26.9m and the still life Pichet et fruits sur une table by the post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), which went for £11.8m.

February 2: Christie's Auction Boosted By Eastern Bloc Buyers
Bidding from Russian and other East European buyers gave a welcome boost to Christie's Impressionist, Modern and Surrealist Art Evening Sale in London this evening.
Against conventionally realistic pre-sale estimates of $87 – $124 million, total receipts amounted to a healthy $122,167,093. This was some 22 percent higher than figures for last February's auction. Roughly 25 percent of lots went to UK buyers, 25 percent to Americans, 48 percent to Europeans, and only 2 percent to Asians. The highest price, $12,887,348 (estimate. $4.8m - $6.4m) was paid for Tete de femme by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Other top prices included $11,284,628 ($8.8m to $12.1m) for Gitane by the Dutch Fauvist portrait painter Kees van Dongen (1877-1968); and $10,216,148 (estimate: $6.4m– $9.6m) for Espagnole by the Russian modernist Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962) - a record auction price for a painting by a female artist. In addition,
Nu aux jambes croisees by the Fauvist leader Henri Matisse (1869-1954) went for $6,031,268 (estimate: $3.9m - $6.3m), while Le baiser by the Belgian classical surrealist painter Rene Magritte (1898-1967) sold for $1,935,428 (estimate: $0.9m - 1.27m).

Art News Headlines 2009

December 10: Sotheby's Art Auctions Smash Pre-Sale Estimates
Sotheby's December 8/9 auctions of contemporary art and Impressionist painting, in Paris, achieved exceptionally promising results: contemporary artworks generated a total of €10.6 million - as against a €6 million - €8.4 million forecast; while Impressionist and modern works made €10.8 million, as compared with a €6.5 million - €9.5 million pre-sale estimate.

December 1: Warhol Print Sells for $100 million
According to the findings of art writer Sarah Thornton in this week's Economist, an unknown buyer has purchased the screenprint Eight Elvises by Andy Warhol for $100 million (£60.5m) in a private sale. If true, it means that the work is the 5th most expensive work of art ever sold.

November 20: Performance Artist Plans Live Epileptic Fit
Next month, 37-year old Rita Marcalo, an award-winning choreographer and long-time epilepsy sufferer, plans to induce a fit as part of an Arts Council-backed project at the Bradford Playhouse, to educate people about epilepsy. The project, entitled "Involuntary Dances" is sponsored to the tune of £13,889 by the British Arts Council. Marcalo is currently performing in Lithuania.

November 18: Performance Artist Jeanne-Claude Dies
Casablanca-born Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon, the wife and professional artist-partner of Christo Javacheff has died aged 74, as a result of complications following a fall. Famous, with her husband for large-scale empaquetage art projects such as the mummification of the Pont Neuf, the envelopment of several Miami islands in pink nylon, and the wrapping of the German Reichstag building in aluminium fabric, she met him soon after he arrived in Paris from his native Bulgaria, in 1958. Moving to New York in 1964, the pair began executing some of the 18 high-visibility interventions for which they are now renowned, some of which were featured in six documentary films by Albert Maysles. She is survived by her husband.

November 10: Chinese Terracotta Warriors On Show in Washington DC
Fifteen of the 8,000 famous life-size terracotta army warriors, excavated from the tomb of the First Qin Emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, who died in 210 BCE, in Shaanxi province, China, will be on show on show at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC from November 19, 2009 to March 31, 2010. In addition to these rare clay sculptures, the travelling exhibition, previously at Santa Ana, California, in Atlanta and in Houston, and the British Museum, also includes artifacts including old armour, weapons and bronze vessels.

October 15: Edward Delaney Sculpture Smashes Irish Sales Record
Three weeks after his death at the age of 79, Edward Delaney achieved an Irish record with the sale of his two-figure bronze work King and Queen, which was hammered down for an extraordinary €190,000 at Adams Auctioneers, in Dublin last night, as against a pre-sale estimate of €12,000-16,000. The previous record price for a work of Irish sculpture was €95,000 for Eve by FE McWilliam, which was sold in December 2006. Three other sculptures by Delaney (Anna, Running Figure, and Organic Form) were also sold, for a total of €110,000.

October 6: Turner Prize Show, Tate Britain
Running until 3 January 2010, the show supposedly contains the cream of contemporary art. And this year the entries are as varied and challenging as ever. They include: the atomised dematerialised remains of a passenger-jet engine; the face of Kenneth Williams; gold painted fresco; the complete skull of a sperm whale; freeze-dried cow brain. The recipient of the £25,000 Turner Prize will be announced on 7 December 2009.

September 13th: Maggot Art
Damien Hirst gave maggots their first starring role in one of his Britart installations (A Thousand Years), now they are going freelance! It's all part of Pestival - a festival about insects staged at London's South Bank centre. Thousands of blowfly larvae were covered with paint by children and then allowed to leave paint-trails, in order to replicate the "dripped paint" style of American abstract expressionist artist Jackson Pollock's famous "action paintings". Once they had finished "painting", the maggot-Picassos were washed and released unharmed into a compost heap. Note: Maggot fine art painting was pioneered in Hawaii, some 8 years ago.

Fed up with bad news? Take a break and read about the evolution of painting and sculpture. Visit: History of Art Timeline. See History of Architecture.

August 7th: INTERPOL Launches Stolen Artwork Website
INTERPOL has announced the launch of their new website featuring over 34,000 pieces of stolen art worldwide. The information is free to anyone who wishes to access it, and artworks are displayed with a photo and description. It is expected that the main users will be governments, galleries, museums, auction houses, foundations and collectors.


July 6: Old Masters Defy Recession: But Modern Art Market Down
Statistics from Art Market Research show sales of old masters are matching prices in January 2008 and are retaining most of the gains of the 2005-08 art boom. A recent Sotheby's art auction saw "Massacre of the Innocents" by Netherlandish master Pieter Breughel the Younger (1525-69) hammered down for £4.63m - nearly double the original estimate. "The Torture of Prometheus", a work by the Naples-based Spanish baroque painter Jose Ribera (1591-1652) sold for £3.85m, way above the £1.2m estimate. However, falling prices are keeping more modern works away. For example, London auction houses report that the number of Impressionist and contemporary paintings being offered for sale has fallen by 70 percent since June last year, obliging houses to cut jobs and guarantees to sellers. Sotheby's announced it is planning a further 5 percent drop in headcount following a 15 percent reduction announced last year. Christie's said it was planning significant staff reductions.

15 May: Record £5m for David Hockney Painting

Hockney's painting Beverly Hills Housewife fetched a record $7,922,500 (£5,236,328) when it was sold to an anonmyous bidder at Christies in New York. The painting is 12ft by 6ft and was owned by Betty Freeman, who died in January. The picture depicted her on her patio. The previous top price paid for a Hockney was £2.92m in 2006 for his painting The Splash.

Until 23 March: Exhibition of "Nothing" Pompidou Centre, Paris

Nine empty rooms comprises the latest exhibition of contemporary art in Paris. A weird reincarnation of John Cage's completely silent piece of "musical" conceptual art entitled "4.33", the new show at the Pompidou Centre has been acclaimed by at least one art critic as the most radical show ever seen inside a museum. According to Laurent Le Bon, curator of the Pompidou Metz, the project is "at the frontline of artistic venture and ...art history". The actual name of the show - The Specialisation of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilised Pictorial Sensibility - is perfectly in keeping with the mind-boggling lack of reality which it represents.

February 22: Is Contemporary art is a fraud?

Yes, says billionaire art collector David Nahmad, one of the world's leading art dealers, who this week savaged the contemporary art market, characterizing its overrated, absurdly high-priced works as "almost fraud". His comments echo those by the British sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, who recently decried the stupid and outrageous prices in the contemporary art market. David Nahmad, reputedly the possessor of a £2 billion collection of around 5,000 paintings, including 300 Picassos, as well as numerous works by Matisse and Rothko, said he doubted if any artist since Francis Bacon had pushed art forward. "There is the real art market, with real artists, and then there is the stupid art market which uses publicity to make some artists become very expensive."

But Louisa Buck, a columnist for The Art Newspaper, disagreed with Nahmad, saying that while artists such as Rothko, Picasso and Matisse were undoubtedly highly influential figures, "the art world has moved on and to dismiss everything after Bacon is utter nonsense."

Fed up of postmodernist art? Visit Renaissance Art for a taste of real disegno.

5 February: Modigliani Portrait Exceeds Low Estimate at Christie's London

Christie's 47-lot collection of Impressionist and modern art was hammered down for £63.4 million against a revised low total estimate of £58.8 million. Portraits by Modigliani and Monet were the top items. The rare Amedeo Modigliani work "Les Deux Filles", which had never appeared at auction before, sold for £6.5 million, against a low estimate of £3.5 - £5 million. Adequate, but nothing to shout about for such a rare and exquisite item. Monet's "Dans la Prairie" attracted a single bid of £11.2 million pounds, with fees, against a pre-sale estimate of £15 million pounds, suggesting that early Impressionist art may be falling out of fashion. The same work sold in 1988 at Sotheby's in London for £14.3 million pounds with fees.

Page Last Updated December 18, 2011.

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