>Show reports, auction results and research >>Get it all delivered for just a $1 an issue! Lucian Freud’s etching, Woman With an Arm Tattoo, (1996), sold at Sotheby’s Australia Aug. 23, 2011, one month after the artist’s death. Numbered 12/40 … Read More +
Tag Archives: art commentary
Former FBI agent turned author Robert Wittman’s first-ever art crime seminar a ‘hit’ with attendees
Former FBI agent and author Robert Wittman’s first-ever seminar June 13, 2011 on how the art business can protect itself against the growing threat of art crime attracted 13 attendees, including Antique Trader columnist Caroline Ashleigh. The week, consisting of five days of instruction and discussion with field experts, was a one-of-a-kind seminar in which each participant personally interacted with the material and presenters. The result was a seminar described by participants as unmatched in quality of topics, expert presentations, and atmosphere.
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Marc Chagall’s love affair with Paris
The Paris discovered by Marc Chagall (1887-1985) when he arrived by train in 1910 was still the city of the art world’s dreams. It was a metropolis of broad boulevards and crooked cobbled alleys lined with ateliers and cafes where Picasso might be found sitting with Braque. Chagall was able to subsist in a city where credit was extended to artists as a matter of course, where meals could sometimes be paid for in sketches and intellectuals could occupy a corner table for an entire afternoon of animated discussion for the price of a cup of coffee.
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Art Markets: Depicting industry in art defined the 20th century modernity
For the first half of the 20th century, images of industry were synonymous with progress. As assembly lines increasingly supplied the needs and wants of the world’s growing urban population, factory scenes became shorthand for the brave new world of modernity. Industrial art became an international genre, crossing political borders and economic systems alike. The scenes of laborers working within the shadows of enormous machines assumed similar form whether in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany or the United States.
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Fine art stolen by Nazis slowly finding its way home
Conquering armies have returned with booty from time immemorial, but in the 20th century, the Nazis organized what was probably the largest campaign of art theft in history. To call it organized, however, overlooks a rivalry among Nazi leaders that resembled gangsters fighting over their share of the loot.
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Tiffany peony border antique lighting fixture floor lamp brings $172,500
Dudley Browne, head of James D. Julia’s glass and lamp department, had a sneaking suspicion the firm’s Dec. 1-2 sale would break new ground. He noted a number of pre-auction cues, such as inquiries from new blood collectors and dealers as well as from veterans who perhaps hadn’t been as active in recent years. His suspicions were confirmed when the auction closed at a very strong $1.9 million in gross sales. The top lot is a spectacular Tiffany peony border floor lamp on a decorated senior base, which sold for $172,500.
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Heinrich Vogeler’s life was as beautiful as his Art Nouveau prints
German artist Heinrich Vogeler (1872-1942) believed art should be inseparable from daily life. Fine art expert Mary Manion show us in her Art Markets column why his life of is worthy of a great novel.
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Canadian Modernists Attracting Respect
Canada might have seemed hundreds if not thousands of miles distant from the centers of modern art in the early decades of the 20th century, but the artists of the dominion transformed their isolation into an asset. Read More +
Art Markets: Art values can be an illusion
It was a snowy New Year’s Eve day, and the appraisers were making a house call. The client was a woman with a family heirloom, a piece of cut and painted paper silhouette art from a genre known by its German name, scherenschnitte. Read More +
Art Markets: Impressionism’s lasting impact
An art critic puzzled at the sight of Claude Monet’s Impression, “Sunrise” (Impression, soleil levant), coined the name “Impressionism” as a jeering insult. But the artists in the exhibition who so irked the critic eagerly embraced the term to describe their new approach to painting. Read More +