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.
What drew me to [them] was clear: an iconic brand with a genuine commitment to the independent advisors across Canada who have chosen to build their businesses here and to the clients they serve. That kind of alignment is rare. Having spent my career building companies at the intersection of real estate and fintech, I've seen what's possible when talented entrepreneurs are supported by the right platform, tools and leadership.
Hong Kong's particular and seductive Metabolist city planning is an ode to consumption as a great totalizer of culture, and to contemporary art as merely a niche commodity form among many others.
If you want to sell Basquiats and Birkins to the very rich, it might help to have a location on Billionaires' Row. It might also help if that location had a certain cultural cachet. Bonhams, the international auction house, managed to find such a spread in a 42,000-square-foot space that is knitted from the lower floors of an odd collection of prewar buildings and razed lots, with pops of old brick walls and limestone interrupting expanses of sheer, contemporary glass.
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'.
In establishing the fair, a foundation (stichting in Dutch) seemed the most fitting legal entity for the purpose of creating an event 'run by dealers, for dealers... so that nobody had an advantage over anybody else.' That Tefaf operates as a not-for-profit differentiates it from other major art fair brands. There are no shareholders demanding a return, no owners to primp the thing for sale.
I grew up in Qatar as a queer person. In Qatar, LGBTQ+ people are silenced. Stepping out of line comes with severe punishment. It is not safe to challenge your family, the country, or religious teachings. You are forced to disappear in order to survive. The open and vibrant Qatar presented through Art Basel is not the state that exists.
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.
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 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.
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);
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.
The Gulf has become an art market hot spot, but insiders say the biggest challenge facing its newest arrivals isn't how to tap the region's wealth, it's how to unlearn assumptions that they may bring with them, particularly concerning the area's money, power, and cultural depth. With Art Basel Qatar debuting next week, the region is no longer a peripheral scene but a new axis of influence for the trade.
Many dealers said that their priority for the debut was making new connections, but what's an art fair without sales? Rest assured, some deals were confirmed during the first two VIP days, on Tuesday and Wednesday, though they took a while. "I'm really happy with this fair," said London dealer Niru Ratnam, who placed Kutlug Ataman's 22-screen video installation Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / The Stream (2022) with an institution on Wednesday for $250,000.