Auctions
Paul G. Allen’s Art at Christie’s Tops $1.5 Billion, Cracking Records
Just when it seemed the high-flying art market couldn’t soar any higher, paintings and sculptures from the collection of the Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, hit the $1.5 billion mark at Christie’s New York on Wednesday night, making it the biggest sale in auction history. The first of two Allen sales, it shattered a six-month-old […]
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Catch a Rising Star at the Auction House
Do this right and you can even make a profit. As the market reporter Katya Kazakina recently explained in Artnet News, galleries with a hot market star on their hands increasingly favor collectors who can “buy one, give one”: in other words, purchase two works in a show and commit to donating one to a […]
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Spring Auction Sales for Two Blockbuster Weeks Top $2.5 Billion
Last year, global auction sales of paintings by artists under 40 soared to $259.5 million, a 177 percent increase on 2020, according to data provided by Artprice, a French-based auction analytics company. Eager to jump on this fast-moving bandwagon, Sotheby’s has come up with a new format called “The Now” sales, focusing on works by […]
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The Macklowe Collection Tops $922 Million at Auction
Blue-chip treasures from one of Manhattan’s most acrimonious billionaire divorces on Monday night helped Sotheby’s achieve what it called a record total sale for a private collection of art at auction, $922 million, with fees. Sotheby’s sold its second cache of trophy-name modern and contemporary works owned by the real estate magnate Harry Macklowe and […]
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Artists of Color and Women Soar at Christie’s ‘21st Century’ Sale
While the usual suspects continue to command the highest prices at auction — as evidenced by Monday night’s $195 million sale of Warhol’s “Marilyn” — the art market also continues to seize on the potential next hot thing. On Tuesday, Christie’s turned its attention to some of those prospects at its 21st century contemporary evening […]
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New York City Eliminates the Rules That Govern Art and Other Auctions
New York City has eliminated the regulations it had tailored to govern the auction industry, an abrupt reversal in policy that is part of a sweeping effort to improve conditions for businesses after the economic damage brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Conceived to help small businesses by cutting red tape and reducing penalties, the […]
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Basquiat Show Curated by His Sisters Offers Intimate Look at the Artist
In a grainy home movie from 1968 — well before he had started on the path that led him to art world fame and an untimely death — an 8-year-old Jean-Michel Basquiat, dressed smartly in long shorts and a button-down shirt, gently guides his year-old sister, Jeanine, by the hand in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with […]
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Christie’s to Sell Entire Ammann Art Collection
Just two weeks after announcing that it would sell an important 1964 Andy Warhol silkscreen of Marilyn Monroe from the Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation Zurich, Christie’s on Wednesday said that it would also handle the sale of the rest of that collection, including works by Robert Ryman, Cy Twombly and Francesco Clemente. “It’s a […]
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The NFT Has Changed Artists. Has it Changed Art?
And then there’s the even more slippery genre known as “relational art,” whose goal is to cast light on human interactions by triggering new ones. Back in 1992, the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija crafted the classic example: He began to cook and serve curry to museumgoers, not for the sake of gastronomy — he started […]
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