Christie's & Sotheby's    www.sothebys.com

Christie's & Sotheby's are gobbling up the art world. Christies posted record sales of $7.1 BILLION or 4.5 BILLION pounds for 2013 with Asia 44% up & internet buying huge. They also now have galleries to sell work just like any commercial art dealers: Sothebys by "the development of the S|2 brand, the global gallery arm of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Department" I quote. 

BUT the big prices are achieved by a mere handful - maybe 20 artists at most - Picasso, Koons, Warhol etc. U can count them on yr fingers. Most artists - dead or alive - still struggle. 

Sothebys have just introduced videos from their 4 new heads of Contemporary & Impressionism. They are short & surprisingly good. Helena Newman co-head world wide, speaks about her defining moment, the recent sale of Giacometti's Walking Man, a world record of any art sold at auction - $104.3 or £69 million. 

Which brings me to a personal story. 

In 1962 my husband, a co-director of New Yorks' famous Staempfli Gallery,  drove artist Louise Nevelson & legendary dealer Martha Jackson to the preview of the Carnegie International in Pittsburg. Gordon Washburn - a terrific guy I am told - was director.  (Washburn organized four Internationals, which were distinguished from larger competitors  like the Venice Biennale and São Paolo Biennial, as the only international survey curated by a single person, “one man’s view of contemporary art” in a few hundred works.

Dinner was at the Heinz house, (as in Heinz baked beans).

On show at the International  was Giacometti's 6 ft tall 'Walking Man'. New York collector & museum benefactor, Louise Smith was there. She asked my husband what he would like to buy.  "I said without any hesitation, if I could afford it, the Walking Man. It was on loan from the Pierre Matisse Gallery & was priced at $26,000. I had visited Giacometti in Paris in the 1950s." Louise Smith agreed she liked it too, & said - "I'll buy it! I'll ask for a reserve on it, till I can discuss its purchase with Mr Matisse." Subsequently it entered her collection. She died at 91 in 1995, a staunch supporter of MoMA from 1957 on. 
From $26,000 to $104.3 million is a memorable jump! 

Clare Henry
clrhenry@aol.com

Friday Frivolity 

BANKSY is at large in Manhattan in what he calls his 1 month Manhattan "artist-in-residency"! 

The now famous black silhouette stencils appear and disappear in a matter of hours. Where? That's the trick. No-one knows. Pop up art. First one of a dog pissing on an iconic NY hydrant. Now u see it; now u don't. Each graffiti is accompanied by a phone number. Call and u get an ironic description plus great upbeat music. www.banksy.co.uk  "All I ever wanted was a shoulder to crayon," he says. Good fun. 

You may think private views are all about the pictures. Not so. A recent trend to the young and rich has pushed - Christies for example - into private views which start at 9pm and go till midnight, when all sensible folk are in bed! Really it's all about shoes and bags - as u can see here. Another trend is for THICK invitation cards. I mean THICK CARD solid enough to be a brick. Gagosian started it - now Pace and dominique levy  are following. A bad idea. Save that tree I say.

The last trend is the After Party - usual standard admission fee 300- 500 dollars. 

                                                                  sotheby's   shoes

In Chelsea Pace is showing white on white paintings by Robert Ryman who came to NYC in the 1950s to play jazz, and worked as a guard for years at MoMA. His 2010 multi-panel piece is titled "No Title Required."
PS. The links to my comments box and guest book are not working, so please do send any nice comments to me at Facebook and nasty ones to mail@birdsinmybeard.com. Thanks.