Displaying items by tag: sales

Having noticed the growing number of works created in the 1960s that have begun to dominate the Contemporary art sales, we asked the good people at Artnet to provide us with enough data to see better how 1960s works have come into their own. Artnet looked at the top 1000 works for each year between 2000 and 2014, then they gave us the works created in the 1960s that appeared on those lists. Karolina Prawdzik turned that data into these charts.

The chart above shows the share of the top 1000 works that were created in the 1960s. Remember that many of Contemporary art’s blue chip artists did their seminal work in the decade: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Mark Rothko, and Yves Klein.

The "David Bowie Is” exhibition broke the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s attendance record with more than 193,000 people visiting in its 15-week run.

“David Bowie Is” is the most successful exhibition in the MCA’s 47-year history, with some Bowie-related programs and performances selling out in less than an hour as well as the highest sales for the MCA Store.

Andy Warhol was the top-selling artist at auction in the past year as increased competition for the most-expensive segment of the market drove global art sales higher.

Collectors bought 1,295 works by the deceased artist totaling $653.2 million, ahead of sales for Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon, according to preliminary figures by New York-based researcher Artnet. Auctions worldwide rose 10 percent to $16 billion.

Art sales have more than doubled from $6.3 billion in 2009, as surging financial markets lifted the fortunes of the world’s richest.

A brazen art crime has been uncovered in Uzbekistan. As the "Guardian" initially reported, several employees from the Uzbek State Art Museum have been found guilty of systematically selling original artworks and replacing them with fakes over a 15 year period.

Mifayz Usmanov, the chief curator of the central Asian country's premier art museum, was sentenced to nine years behind bars for his involvement in the daylight robbery. Two restorers were sentenced to eight years each.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam acquired a 17th-century sculpture by Adriaen de Vries at Christie's New York last week for a record $27.9 million against an estimate of $15—25 million. The recently rediscovered bronze—a Bacchic figure supporting a globe—is said to be one of the artist's best works and represents one of the first De Vries statue in a Dutch art collection, according to a statement from the museum.

Adriean de Vries “is the Dutch Michelangelo and his works are equally rare," said Rijksmuseum general director Wim Pijbes. “Therefore it is absolutely great that we have been able to buy this fabulous sculpture for the Netherlands."

Art Basel’s 13th edition in Miami Beach closed Sunday, December 7, 2014, amidst strong praise from gallerists, private collectors, museum groups and the media. Highlights of the show included the introduction of the new Survey sector, which brought 13 art-historical projects to the fair, including many rare works never before exhibited in an art fair context; and Art Basel's staging with Performa of Ryan McNamara's "MEƎM 4 Miami: A Story Ballet About the Internet" at the Miami Grand Theater. Solid sales were reported across all levels of the market and throughout the run of the show. Featuring 267 leading international galleries from 31 countries, the show – whose Lead Partner is UBS – attracted an attendance of 73,000 over five days. Attendees included representatives of over 160 museum and institution groups from across the world – and a surging number of new private collectors from the Americas, Europe and Asia.

Following a 100 percent reapplication rate for the Galleries sector and with new galleries coming from across the world, the list of exhibitors was the strongest to date in Miami Beach, firmly solidifying the show's position as the leading international art fair of the Americas.

A new bill introduced in Washington, DC last week seeks to block looted Syrian cultural heritage from entering the US. The Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act asks Congress to appoint a cultural property protection czar and establish emergency import restrictions to protect endangered cultural patrimony. The bill aims to “deny terrorists and criminals the ability to profit from instability by looting the world of its greatest treasures,” says the congressman Eliot Engel, a Democrat from New York, in a statement. Engel is co-sponsoring the legislation with Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey.

Black market sales of looted cultural objects are the largest source of funding for the Islamic State after oil, according to Newsweek.

Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde fish and Piero Manzoni’s white canvas were among the top purchases during Frieze Week in London as the auction houses sold 231.2 million pounds ($373 million) of art.

As the biggest week-long concentration of art events in Europe ended yesterday, dealers at Frieze Art Fair individually reported brisk sales and the tallies at the auction houses almost doubled from last year’s October sales.

 As anticipation of the upcoming fall auction season continues to build, Sotheby’s has announced that it will offer the illustrious Schlumberger Collection during its Evening and Day Sales of Impressionist & Modern Art and Contemporary Art on November 4-5 and November 11-12, respectively. The collection, which brings together over ninety modern and contemporary masterworks from the twentieth century, is expected to fetch over $85 million.

Pierre Schlumberger, an aristocratic French oil-industry tycoon, and his beautiful Portuguese wife, São, are considered two of the most visionary collectors of the twentieth century.

According to The Art Newspaper, Christie’s has boosted its seller’s commission in its contracts with consignors. The auction house will now charge 2% of the hammer price of a work that meets or exceeds its high estimate. After the 2% performance fee, Christie’s charges commission using a sliding scale based on a work’s final hammer price.

In order to attract powerful sellers offering blue-chip works, auction houses often waive the seller’s commission for preferred clients. Christie’s new 2% performance fee, which is in addition to the fixed buyer’s premium (the percentage of the hammer price paid by the buyer), ensures that the auction house will receive a portion of the profits from both sides of a blockbuster sale.