The cover page of the auction book for U.S photographer Richard Avedon art sale is presented at Christie’s auction house in Paris, Thursday Nov.18, 2010. More than 60 photographs for the Avedon Foundation will be auctioned next Saturday. AP Photo

A model in a silk Dior gown, posing with elephants. The psychedelically colored faces of the Beatles. A soot-covered coal miner.

Christie’s in Paris will auction some of Richard Avedon’s most prized photographs Saturday to raise money for the foundation set up by the influential American portrait and fashion photographer before his death in 2004.

The more than 60 photographs are expected to raise $6 million. The auction represents the largest collection of Avedon’s work to reach market.

Continue reading — Richard Avedon’s Most Prized Photographs for Sale Saturday at Christie’s in Paris

The campaign to raise £2.7million so save The Procession to Calvary by Pieter Brueghel the Younger has reached just under £900,000 as the painting returns to Yorkshire to go on display at York Art Gallery on 17 November 2010.

The painting, the star attraction at the National Trust’s Nostell Priory & Parkland, has been on display at the National Gallery for a month where it has been seen by almost half a million people and is now returning to Yorkshire for the next phase of the fundraising campaign where it can be enjoyed by the people of Yorkshire.

Continue reading — Old Master Brueghel Campaign Approaches 900,000 as Painting Returns to Yorkshire

People stand near the Alexei Bogoliubov painting “On the Eve of the Celebration, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice”.

Sotheby’s autumn 2010 auctions of Russian Art in New York brought a total of $14,397,064. The day began with an inaugural sale of Important Russian Paintings that achieved $10.6 million and set several new auction records. The highlight of the sale was a monumental canvas by the Socialist Realist painter Yuri Pimenov that sold for $1,538,500, more than double the high estimate and a record for the artist at auction.

Continue reading — Sales of Russian Art at Sotheby’s Total $14.4 Million, Important Russian Enamels and Fabergé Sold

A painting by celebrated master Edgar Degas has been found at a New York auction nearly 40 years after being stolen from a French museum, France’s culture ministry said Wednesday.

Sotheby’s removed “Blanchisseuses souffrant des dents” (“Laundry Women with Toothache”) from its impressionist art sale after France alerted the auction house that it belonged to the Louvre Museum in Paris, ministry officials told AFP, confirming information first reported in La Tribune de l’Art website.

Continue reading — Stolen Degas painting discovered at New York auction

Black Grape by Dick Evans at Newspeak 2, Saatchi Gallery

The British Art Show isn’t just any old art exhibition; it’s an event of seismic significance for the visual arts in this country. Well, that’s what the organisers hope, anyway. Staged at five-year intervals, it is supposed to present an overview of how art has evolved since the last time round and, perhaps, where it might be heading in the future. Last week the seventh instalment opened at three separate venues in Nottingham before it moves on to Plymouth, Glasgow and London next year.

The success or failure of every British Art Show depends on the taste and judgment of curators who spend at least two years visiting exhibitions and artists’ studios across the land. The selectors aren’t bound to choose only young or emerging artists, but can single out established figures whom they think may have taken a new direction or who are working at the top of their game.

Continue reading — The British Art Show, Nottingham / Newspeak II, Saatchi Gallery

Andy Warhol, Brillo Soap Pads Box , 1964, silkscreen ink on synthetic polymer paint on wood, 17 x 17 x 14 in. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Founding Collection.
More than 100 Brillo boxes, said to be works by Andy Warhol, have been declared “copies” by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board after a three-year investigation.

It centred on two series of boxes produced by the late Pontus Hultén (1924-2006), the founding director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. Hultén claimed that Warhol authorised the production of the boxes for the seminal exhibition that Hultén curated in Stockholm in 1968. But in 2007, the Swedish newspaper Expressen discovered that no wooden boxes had been displayed in the show and that cardboard boxes from the Brillo factory had been used instead. It set out to research the date and manufacture of Hultén’s boxes, many of which had entered the market.

Continue reading — Warhol Brillo boxes downgraded to “copies”

Following yesterday evening’s remarkably strong results, Sotheby’s October Sales Series of 20th Century Italian Art and Contemporary Art today concluded with the Contemporary Art Day Auction, which brought the near-top estimate total of £9,683,850 ($15,513,528/€11,014,376) (est. £7.5-10.6 million). The sale established sell-through rates of 83% by lot and 86% by value.

Continue reading — Sotheby’s October Sales of Italian Art and Contemporary Art Realise the Outstanding Total of £40.1 Million