Displaying items by tag: New York

Christie’s International announced that they will be closing their Haunch of Venison subsidiaries in New York and London in March 2013. The gallery in Chelsea will close after its exhibition, How to Tell the Future from the Past, ends its run on March 2. The London gallery, known as the Yard, will be converted to a permanent exhibition and sales space for Christie’s private sales department.

Founded by art dealers Harry Blain and Graham Southern in 2002, Haunch of Venison represents and exhibits the works of emerging and established contemporary artists. The gallery’s name comes from the London courtyard, Haunch of Venison Yard, where it was originally based. Christie’s bought the gallery, which had branches in London, Berlin, and New York, in 2007. Haunch of Venison’s Berlin branch closed in 2010, the same year Blain and Southern left Haunch to start a new gallery, BlainSouthern.

Christie’s decision to shutter the Haunch of Venison galleries came as private sales have been gaining ground for the auction house. The restructuring will focus the company’s attention on those private sales rather than working as a primary gallery representing artists. Haunch of Venison has also withdrawn from the upcoming European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht.

On February 21, 2013 Lichtenstein: A Retrospective will open at the Tate Modern in London. Part of the show, which features 125 paintings and sculptures, is pop artist Roy Lichtenstein’s (1923-1997) only film, a triptych titled Three Landscapes. This will be the first time the film will be viewed in Europe; since debuting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1971, the film has been exhibited once in the United States at the Whitney Museum in New York in 2011.  

The little-known film was made in 1971 during Lichtenstein’s residency at LACMA. The residency program he attended paired artists with high-tech companies in Southern California. Lichtenstein, who employed a cinematic quality in his works, was paired with Universal Film. During his time at Universal, Lichtenstein was treated to a studio tour, a visit to the set of Alfred Hitchcock’s film Topaz, and lessons in film techniques such as editing and special effects. Three Landscapes was the first and last time Lichtenstein experimented with film as a medium.

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective will be on view through May 27, 2013. Three Landscapes will be shown in the Tate’s Tanks gallery from March 9-12 and 14-24.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the largest art museum in the United States, can be difficult to navigate in a short period time. With over two million works in its collection, visitors to the Met usually spend a few minutes with an object before moving on to one of the many masterpieces that awaits them. In an effort to highlight some of the museum’s not-to-be-missed objects, Met officials have launched the web series, 82^nd & Fifth, aptly named after the museum’s Manhattan location.

The series presents 100 pieces from the Met’s vast collection in separate episodes. During each episode, a museum curator explains the work’s significance, not just to the art world and the museum, but also to them on a personal level.

The Met has already posted six 2-½ to 3-minute videos, which include interactive features, on the 82^nd & Fifth web page. Highlighted works include a room with furnishings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) between 1912 and 1915, a Renaissance relief sculpture by Antonio Rossellino (1427-circa 1478/1481), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s (1696-1770) massive painting The Triumph of Marius (1729), and an etching by Rembrandt (1606-1669) titled Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves: The Three Crosses (1653).

The Met will post two new videos on Wednesday morning of each week through December 25, 2013.

Christie’s Renaissance and Old Master sales, which ran from January 29-31, 2013 in New York, set a number of important records this week. First, during a sale of works by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) on January 29, a woodcut titled The Rhinoceros sold for $866,500, setting a record for the artist at auction. The piece, which was completed in 1515, surpassed its presale estimate of $100,000 to $150,000. The auction, which presented 65 works from a private collection, brought $6 million in total.

The auction house’s Renaissance and Old Master sales brought in a total of $88.4 million, the highest total for the series of sales in New York since 2006. Contributing to the auctions’ huge success was a number of groundbreaking sales. Fra Bartolomeo’s (1472-1517) The Madonna and Child brought $12.96 million, the top price paid for the artist at auction. Sandro Botticelli’s (1445-1510) Madonna and Child with Young Saint John the Baptist sold for $10.4 million, also setting a record for the artist at auction. The Botticelli painting had previously been a part of the Rockefeller family’s collection for over 50 years.  

Nicholas Hall, Co-Chairman of Old Masters and 19^th Century Art at Christie’s said, “We are so pleased by the results of this week’s Renaissance sale that we have decided to repeat a themed Renaissance sale in January 2014.” He added that the sales have affirmed, “The strength and enduring appeal of Old Master works of art.”

Suspended Forms: American Modernism 1908-1928 opened yesterday, January 31, 2013 at Driscoll Babcock Galleries in New York and will run through February 16, 2013. The exhibition focuses on American modern art’s earlier phase and includes paintings and drawings by modern masters such as Alfred Maurer (1868-1932), Walt Kuhn (1877-1949), Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Charles Burchfield (1893-1967), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Charles Sheeler (1883-1965), and Joseph Stella (1877-1946).

Suspended Forms will be held at Driscoll Babcock’s relatively new location in Chelsea. Founded 160 years ago, Driscoll Babcock Galleries moved from its former Fifth Avenue location to Chelsea in September 2012.

Onetime friends and business partners, powerhouse art dealer Larry Gagosian and billionaire collector Ronald O. Perelman have been involved in a bitter legal battle since September 2012. On January 25, 2013 Gagosian asked a New York judge to dismiss the case, which accuses him of using his high standing in the art world to arrange secret deals and influence art prices; Gagosian claims that the lawsuit is frivolous.

The ongoing clash started last year when Perelman purchased Jeff Koons’ (b. 1955) $4 million Popeye sculpture from Gagosian along with two other works said to be a Cy Twombly (1928-2011) painting and a Richard Serra (b. 1939) sculpture. Perelman paid for Koons’ oversize granite sculpture in full, but decided to cancel the deal when the work took longer than expected to complete. Since the value of Koons’ work is constantly on the rise, Perelman insisted that Gagosian owed him $12 million rather than the $4 million he initially paid for the unfinished work.

In his lawsuit, Perelman claimed that Gagosian had a secret agreement with Koons to redirect most of the profit from Popeye’s resale away from Perelman and towards Koons. The sculpture in question was ultimately sold to an unnamed buyer for $4.5 million and Gagosian gave $4.25 million of that back to Perelman, a fact Gagosian pointed out in court on Friday. Gagosian also claimed that Perelman refused to pay the agreed-upon price for the Twombly and Serra works, insisting that he would compensate for the debt he accumulated by giving Gagosian a number of artworks from his collection that he no longer wanted. Rather than benefitting from the deal as Perelman asserts, Gagosian said that he has lost $1.8 million so far.

While Perelman maintains that Gagosian is dishonest and deceitful in his dealings, Gagosian claims that the lawsuit is simply a way for his former friend to mar his name. Perelman’s side has made subpoenas as the battle continues.  

When Henry Kravis, the co-chairman of the global investment firm KKR & Co., and prominent art collector Donald L. Bryant Jr. purchased a triptych by Jasper Johns (b. 1930) in 2008, the duo agreed to take turns exhibiting the works in their homes before eventually donating them to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In a lawsuit recently filed by Kravis and his wife, Marie-Josée, the couple claims that Bryant violated their agreement when he refused to hand the works over to them on January 14, 2013. The Kravises stated that Bryant is essentially holding the works hostage until their agreement is amended, nixing the pledge to donate the paintings.     

Considered one of the most important living American artists, Johns completed the three works titled Tantric Detail I, Tantric Detail II, and Tantric Detail III in 1980 and 1981. A powerful presence in the contemporary art market, Johns’ triptych is said to be worth between $15 million and $25 million. MoMA announced the Johns acquisition in a 2008 press release saying that the works were a “promised gift” from Bryant, who was one of the museum’s trustees at the time, Marie-Josée, the president of MoMA’s board of trustees, and her husband, Henry.

In their lawsuit, the Kravises ask that Bryant relinquish the works to them so that they can fulfill their vow to donate the paintings to MoMA.  

Surrealism, a cultural movement that includes visual arts, literature, film, and music, began in the 1920s with the musings of the French writer and poet, André Breton (1896-1966). Now celebrated and studied for its innovative and daring nature, surrealism pushed the boundaries in regard to established aesthetics and artistic techniques. While experimenting with modern conventions, surrealist masters such as Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), Max Ernst (1891-1976), René Magritte (1898-1967), and Joan Miró (1893-1983) went on to create some of the most revered artworks of the 20^th century.

Drawing Surrealism, an exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, explores the surrealists’ relationship with drawing. While most exhibitions and scholars tend to focus on the surrealists’ paintings and sculptures, drawing played a pivotal part in the movement. The medium, which is highly connected to the brain and offers a sense of immediacy and spontaneity, was the perfect vehicle for the surrealists who valued the subconscious mind, dream imagery, language, and happenstance. The Surrealists used techniques such as automatic drawing and frottage, which requires rubbing graphite or another drawings material on a sheet of paper that is place over a textured surface, to bypass the conscious mind, creating instinctive and inimitable works.

Drawing Surrealism, which is co-organized with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), presents over 165 works on paper and occupies two of the Morgan’s galleries. The exhibition is organized chronologically, illustrating how surrealist drawing techniques evolved and spread throughout the world over time. The Morgan, LACMA, Tate Modern (London), the Pompidou Center (Paris), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Menil Collection (Houston) all contributed works for the exhibition.

Drawing Surrealism will be on view at the Morgan Library & Museum through April 21, 2013.

Paris’ legendary Ritz hotel, which is currently undergoing a major $267.5 million renovation, has been unknowingly sheltering a 17^th century masterpiece. The work, which is believed to be by the French painter and court artist of Louis XIV, Charles Le Brun (1619-1690), was first spotted by Olivier Lefeuvre, a specialist in the period at Christie’s France. Upon seeing the painting in July, a month before the Ritz closed its doors for two years worth of renovations, Lefeuvre knew that the work had to be a Le Brun. Initials reading “CLBF,” which stands for Charles Le Brun Fecit (Le Brun did this) and a date, “1647,” were found on the work, supporting Lefeuvre’s hunch.  

How the painting ended up in the Ritz remains a mystery, as the hotel archives lack any reference to the work. While Christie’s has been unable to track down any record of the painting, officials have no doubt that the work is an authentic Le Brun. The painting, which depicts the killing of Trojan princess Polyxena after she was linked to the death of Achilles, was renamed The Sacrifice of Polyxena by Christie’s.

The Le Brun painting will be auctioned by Christie’s in Paris in April 2013 and could raise as much as $665,000 for the foundation established by owner Mohamed Al Fayed in memory of his son Dodi, the late boyfriend of Princess Diana. Dodi and Diana dined at the Ritz before their fatal car accident in 1997.

The painting will go on display at Christie’s New York location next week.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that on January 18, 2013, the number of visitors to the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia hit the one million mark. The renovated galleries, which reopened to the public on November 1, 2011, draw approximately 2,550 patrons each day.

The Met’s Islamic Art collection, which is comprised of over 1,200 works and spans 1,300 years, is considered one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind. The holdings are presented in 15 different galleries, the result of an eight-year project that included renovations, expansions, and reinstallations.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, said, “Since these galleries reopened in their new configuration just over a year ago, we have been truly gratified by the exceptional interest that our visitors – both local and international – have taken in this newly conceived presentation of Islamic art.”

To commemorate the Met’s milestone, the one-millionth visitor to the Islamic art galleries received a catalogue of the collection.