Jeff Koons, “Elephant” (Purple). Estimate: 300,000 – 400,000 Euros One of the major events at Sotheby’s this Autumn promises to be the sale in Paris on December 8 of a unique work by Jeff Koons: “Elephant” (Purple), donated by the artist to the Foundation Claude Pompidou in 2009. This masterpiece from 1999 (estimate €300,000-400,000) will [...]

Marsden Hartley (1877 – 1943), “Mountains No. 22″, 1930. Oil on canvas, 30 x 36 inches (76.2 x 91.4 cm). Est. $800,000/1.2 million. Sotheby’s auction of American Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture on 3 December 2009 will offer collectors a rich array of works by American artists from the 19th and 20th centuries. The auction includes [...]

Artist Damien Hirst stands in The Wallace Collection at his ‘No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst’ exhibition. The art critics ripped into Damien Hirst’s new show at the Wallace Collection as if his notorious sharks in formaldehyde had escaped their elegant glass prisons and were determined to wreak bloody revenge on their creator. [...]

“Large Vase of Flowers,” by artist Jeff Koons, an exquisitely colorful, vibrant work with complex allusions to social hierarchies, taste, life cycles, and sex, ultimately sold for $5,682,500. Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale totaled $74,151,500/£44,669,578/€49,766,107. Works by artists Peter Doig, Jeff Koons, and Joan Mitchell commanded the top prices. In addition, new world [...]

Personnel from the Stadel Museum hang Sandro Botticelli’s “Minerva and the Centaur” a few days before the exhibition opens in Frankfurt. The Städel Museum will show the first monographic exhibition on Sandro Botticelli (1444/45–1510) in the German-speaking world from 13 November 2009 to 28 February 2010. Taking the artist’s monumental Idealized Portrait of a Lady, [...]