"I love the paintings of Enrico Donati as I love a night in May." This sentiment from André Breton reflects the deep admiration he had for Donati's work, emphasizing the emotional connection to the art.
The three stolen paintings are minor works from the three masters. Renoir's painting, for example, is very beautiful, but, within the context of the foundation as a whole, it isn't among the most important works.
Kamrooz Aram is everywhere this year, from Mumbai Art Week to the Whitney Biennial, and critic Aruna D'Souza is grateful. She pens a beautiful meditation on his work, reading his abstract paintings as not simply a denunciation of Western modernism nor a reassertion of Islamic visual motifs, but something else entirely - something gestural, exuberant, riotous, and incomparably his own.
Art Basel Hong Kong is the latest event on the art calendar to project an uncanny vision of normalcy amid the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.
Stephen Friedman was overdue filing when he went into liquidation on 2 February, closing his London gallery immediately (his New York venue shuttered around the same date). At the time of writing, invoices remain unpaid and artists unable to retrieve works from storage companies. In a statement, Friedman says 'all matters are now subject to the administrator's consideration'.
Major works from media mogul S.I. Newhouse's estate are poised to smash records at Christie's in May. The tranche of 35 to 40 works includes paintings by Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, and Jasper Johns, as well as a Constantin Brancusi sculpture, and is valued it at a whopping $450 million.
The terms are often conflated to portray an air of desirability and a limited opportunity. Rarity generally refers to the unusualness of an object—something that is infrequently encountered or 'rare to market.' With modern works from the past century, rarity can stem from limited original production, or the fact that many examples are held in museum or institutional collections, reducing their availability in the marketplace.
The work represents a 'real turning point' in the artist's development, said Ottilie Windsor, head of contemporary art at Sotheby's London. She noted that the painting's key characteristics, such as constructive perspective, flattened space, and a balance between observation and artifice, would reappear in Hockney's later works, such as his iconic California swimming pools and Yorkshire landscapes.
For some eminently wealthy individuals, amassing a first-class art collection is an ideal way to spend their money. And while some high-profile art collectors end up donating their collections to museums or other cultural institutions, others take a different approach, reselling their art after a certain amount of time. Which brings us to this week, when billionaire David I. Koch's collection of Western art hit the auction block at Christie's, setting a number of records in the process.
We're still the new kids on the block. But it feels like we're more on the map, more anticipated this year. This year at Post-Fair, his gallery is showing small works by Edgar Ramirez, who won the Frieze Impact Prize in 2023.
Under the terms of Sotheby's new fee structure, buyer's premiums for lots sold in New York are increasing from 27% on lots priced at or above $1m to 28% for all works sold for hammer prices up to and including $2m (£1.5m in London). The medium tier buyer's premium will remain 22% of the hammer price, but will be applied to lots sold for between $2m and $8m (£1.5m and £6m in London);
The snippet carries the phrase "Fathers of the Senate!" which is nowhere found in surviving Washington documents. The expression is borrowed from ancient Roman Senate-specifically the Latin patres conscripti , or "Conscript Fathers"-and quite possibly wasn't the patrician tone Washington intended to set for a young republic. It is unknown why or how it was used in this case as the manuscript from which the fragment was cut is long lost.