Displaying items by tag: New York

Next fall doors will open to Paris’ Parsons the New School for Design for the second time. Frank Alvah Parsons, who founded the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons), initially opened a French branch in 1921. The Paris location closed temporarily during World War II and when Parson merged with the New School for Social Research in 1970, the Paris branch was included. The New York and Paris campuses continued to grow apart until their association was no more than a technical one. In 2010 the Paris institution changed its name to the Paris College of Art and the New School could return to Paris using the Parsons moniker.

The new campus will be announced on November 29 at the Palais de Tokyo. Located on the Rue Saint-Roch, the Paris School of Art and Design will accommodate 300 to 500 students, who will be able to begin their studies there or in New York. Parson also has associated campuses in Shanghai and Mumbai. The school will offer bachelor’s and master’s programs in multiple art disciplines, fashion, design, and business.

Held at Christie’s in New York this past Monday, the first in a series of auctions to benefit the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts brought in over $17 million. The sale featured over 354 works by Andy Warhol including prints and photographs. Online auctions will begin this coming February.

Many works exceeded their high estimates including Jackie, a screen print and paper collage of Jacqueline Kennedy that had a high estimate of $300,000 and sold for $626,000 as well as Self Portrait in Fright Wig which was estimated at $12,000-$18,000 and sold for $50,000. The biggest sale of the night was a print featuring a butterfly titled Endangered Species: San Francisco Silverspot that reached over $1.2 million.

Profits from the sale will go towards the foundation’s endowment, and will help the organization to expand their contributions to the visual arts.

One of the biggest sales at Doyle New York’s Rare Books, Autographs, and Photographs auction on November 5 was an important letter by George Washington. Purchased by a private collector for $362,500, the letter surpassed its pre-sale estimate of $80,000-$100,000. It was the fourth highest price paid at auction for a letter by Washington and the highest price for a single-page letter.

Written to James McHenry, Washington’s wartime aide on December 10, 1783, the President writes of his intention to resign as Continental Commander and become “translated into a private Citizen.” The letter was sold with McHenry’s archives in 1859 to Baltimore collector William T. Walters. It remained in Walters’ family until it was offered at Doyle’s auction.

The entire sale totaled $1,604,594, surpassing the pre-sale estimate of $849,200 to $1,255,000 and 90% of lots sold. Besides George Washington’s letter, major sales included John Webster’s The Deuils Law Case… (1623), the first quarto edition, which achieved $25,000; a set of Author’s Autograph Edition of Whitman that sold for $22,500; and a letter from Paul Gauguin to Camille Pissarro that brought $28,125.

The top sale at last night’s Impressionist and modern Art auction at Sotheby’s in New York was a 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso of his muse, Marie-Therese Walter. The suggestive Nature Morte aux Tulipes, estimated at $35 to $50 million, sold to a phone bidder for $41.5 million.

The sale at Sotheby’s took place just one day after Christie’s lackluster Impressionist and modern art auction and didn’t fare much better than its predecessor. While there were some notable sales, 31% of lots went untouched including mid-level works by Degas and Rodin. While many have been blaming the election and unfortunate weather for the mixed sales, the quality of the work featured has also in question. Many have taken note of the padded sales by both auction houses and during these delicate economic times, buyers want to spend money on exceptional works, not mediocre works by exceptional artists.

On a positive note, there were a number of impressive sales besides the Picasso portrait. Claude Monet’s 1881 landscape Champ de Blé estimated at $5 to $7 million fetched $12.1 million and a photograph of Marcel Duchamp taken by Man Ray sold for $2.4 million, well over it’s $1.7 million high estimate. Another work that exceeded expectations was Fernand Leger’s Les Contructeurs, which went for $1.37 million, more than double its low estimate. The sale brought in $163 million; it was expected to garner about $169 million in total.  

After a monumental postwar and contemporary auction that totaled $386 million this past spring, Christie’s expects an even bigger sale this November. Taking place November 14–15 in New York, the auction house estimates that the Post-War and Contemporary Art Sale could garner more than $441 million.

The 74-lot evening auction includes Andy Warhol’s Statue of Liberty canvas expected to bring in around $35 million and one of his silkscreens of Marlon Brando estimated at $15-$20 million. Other major draws include Jeff Koons’ balloon tulips for $25 million, a Rothko painting for $15-$20 million, and works by market darlings Alexander Calder, Gerhard Richter, Franz Kline, Ellsworth Kelly, and Jasper Johns. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1981) is expected to set records for the artist with an estimate of $20 million.

Christie’s has already brought in $928 million in contemporary art sales this year.

This past Sunday, Montreal's Place des Arts and the stage troupe Finzi Pasca unveiled a mural by Salvador Dali that has remained out of public view for sixty years. Measuring 29 ½ feet by 40 feet, the backdrop was painted for the 1944 ballet production “Le Tristan Fou (Mad Tristan),” a take on “Tristan und Isolde,” while the Surrealist artist was in exile in New York. The backdrop made an appearance in London in 1949 and then fell out of sight until an anonymous European foundation re-discovered it three years ago.

The rare piece was restored but rather than exhibit it in a museum of gallery, the foundation offered it to theater creator and circus master Daniele Finzi Pasca for use in an upcoming acrobatic stage production. Pasca decided to incorporate the painting into “La Vérità,” a story inspired by “Tristan und Isolde” as well as Dali’s exile, the 1940s cabaret scene, and the Dali’s wife and muse, Gala.

Members of the public can take a closer look at the Dali backdrop at Théâtre Maisonneuve in Place des Arts on Wednesday, November 7. La Vérità, featuring the Dali backdrop will premiere at the theater on January 17, 2013.

On December 5, Sotheby’s in New York will help cosmetics executive, Leonard Lauder, auction off jewelry that once belonged to his wife, Evelyn, and mother Estée. The collection is worth at least $13.4 million and includes a 47.714-carat heart-shaped yellow diamond with connections to the Duchess of Windsor, a Van Cleef & Arpels brooch featuring a pair of ruby tulips and diamonds, a flawless 6.54-carat fancy intense pink diamond ring by Oscar Heyman & Bros, and a 22.16-carat platinum and diamond ring from Graff.

Part of Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels auction, the proceeds from the 35 pieces will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, an organization founded and championed by Evelyn Lauder. Additional pieces from the collection will be offered in New York as part of the Important Jewels auction in February 2013, also sold to benefit the Research Foundation. Leonard Lauder, chairman of The Estée Lauder Company and acting chairman of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation said, “We are pleased to be partnering with Sotheby’s for this important auction. Each piece of jewelry is unique and very special.”

 The auction comes at a time when high-end jewelry has been outperforming most of the art market. Buyers and collectors continue to seek recession-proof assets and have turned to quality jewelry designed by big names such as Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels for stable investments. Sotheby’s said its jewelry sales were up 19% this year.

Christie’s announced this week that it has named Doug Woodham the president of Christie’s Americas. Woodham has spent the last 20 years working in finance, technology, and business, holding jobs at UBS Wealth Management and Moody’s KMV, an analytics company that helps capital markets and credit risk management professionals worldwide.

Christie’s former president, Marc Porter, is now the international head of private sales and will continue to serve as the chairman of Christie’s Americas. Woodham, who will report directly to Christie’s CEO Steven Murphy, will be responsible for the overall management of the company in the Americas.

Woodham’s art world experience includes a two-year stint as the co-chair of the American Fellows patron program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He played a pivotal role in developing a financial plan for funding the Whitney’s new building; a Renzo Piano designed the $750 million structure that will open in New York’s meatpacking district in 2015.

After Hurricane Sandy battered the east coast, art institutions from the Lower East Side to upstate New York felt the effects. Art galleries including R 20^th Century in SoHo, Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side, the New Museum on the Bowery, Postmasters Gallery in Chelsea, and Storm King Art Center upstate in Mountainville were without electricity as of yesterday. Eyebeam and Zach Feuer in Chelsea suffered serious flooding. Water levels reached above five feet inside Feuer’s gallery, destroying the entire exhibition on view. Most of the gallery’s permanent inventory is kept on storage racks higher than five feet so Feuer has hope that those works will be salvageable.

Once dealers have fully assessed and dealt with the damages to their galleries and inventories, they will be faced with increased insurance premiums. While many galleries have liability and short-term travel insurance, they do not usually insure art.

In addition, some of the city’s most anticipated galas were cancelled due to the hurricane. The Studio Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the New York Public Radio all put their galas on hold because of Sandy. Hopefully the hit to New York’s gala season won’t affect the fundraising efforts tied to such events.

Beginning on November 13, Doyle New York will start auctioning select works from the Spanierman Gallery, one of the Upper East Side’s foremost American art galleries. Founded by Ira Spanierman in the 1960s, the Spanierman Gallery has played an important role in the understanding and appreciation of American art from the colonial era through the 20^th century. The gallery has also placed many iconic works in prominent public and private collections across the country.

As the Spanierman Gallery has decided to shift its focus to modern and contemporary American art, they will auction hundreds of works from their early American art collection at a number of select sales that will take place in 2012 and 2013. The November 13 auction will include thirty works including four pieces by John Henry Twachtman, the last fully bound sketchbook of studies by Maurice Prendergast not in a museum collection, and a double-sided work by Alfred Maurer that exemplifies the artist’s Fauvist palette.

Another 36 works from the Spanierman collection will be sold at Doyle’s American furniture, decorations, and 19^th century painting sale on November 19.