ARTFIXdaily News Feed - Breaking News from the Art World

Art & antiques fair renaissance

ArtfixDaily / July 12th, 2010

Art Basel, TEFAF Maastricht, New York's Winter Antiques Show, each is long-established in its own niche as a world-class art fair, drawing tens of thousands of visitors annually, at least some of them deep-pocketed buyers. These mainstays of the art and antiques scene, to name a few, are now ...

Art historians question $13 million Rubens

Independent / July 11th, 2010

From Althorp, the family home of Diana, Princess of Wales, 775 items were sold at Christie's in London last week for £21m. The top lot was Portrait of a Commander Being Dressed for Battle, by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, which reached £9m ($13 million), the second highest price paid for a work by the ...

Rose Art Museum collection to be leased through Sotheby's

ArtfixDaily / July 11th, 2010

The sordid situation which took shape in early 2009 around the collection of Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum, a leading repository of modern and contemporary art, took a new twist recently. A contract has been signed between the debt-plagued university, located in Waltham, Mass., and ...

A taste of SOFA WEST: Santa Fe 2010

ArtfixDaily / July 8th, 2010

Twenty-eight premier galleries and dealers converge this weekend in Santa Fe for the second annual SOFA WEST, a hotbed of cutting edge design and decorative arts. On offer are fresh works drawn from traditional artisan materials and methods just as much as they reach for new heights in artistic ...

Weekend Destination: ArtHamptons 2010

ArtfixDaily / July 8th, 2010

Now in its third year, ArtHamptons, a cultural star of the Hamptons summer season and increasingly a major buying venue for modern art, is chock full of special events this weekend. Friday begins the first annual Worldwide Art Collectors' Conference along with more than two dozen meet-the-artist ...

Turner landscape, silver wine cooler set records at Sotheby's

ArtfixDaily / July 7th, 2010

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles won J.M.W. Turner's ethereal final painting of Rome, “Modern Rome — Campo Vaccino” (1839) for $44.9 million (with fees) at a Sotheby's sale in London on Wednesday. In pristine condition, the work reached an auction record for the British master, soundly ...

Summer Selections: Three Impressionist gems unveiled by M.S. Rau

ArtfixDaily / July 7th, 2010

A striking trio of Impressionist oils have been secured from private collections by New Orleans-based M.S. Rau Antiques. The new acquisitions, two by the iconic Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) and one by noted Belgian Neo-Impressionist Théo Van Rysselberghe (1862-1926), capture three divergent ...

Book Review: The Art of Aiden Lassell Ripley

ArtfixDaily / July 6th, 2010

An "informative and lavishly illustrated book, The Art of Aiden Lassell Ripley...has quickly become recognized as the most comprehensive effort to date on the artist," writes Antiques and the Arts. Co-authored by sporting art and decoy authority, dealer, author and auctioneer Stephen B. O'Brien ...

London Auction: Sorolla soars above estimate, Rubens reaps $13 million

ArtfixDaily / July 6th, 2010

A Peter Paul Rubens portrait of a bearded commander in battle armor led the charge at Christie's Old Master & 19th c. Paintings sale Tuesday evening. A solid total of £42.3 million ($64.2 million) fell within the £36.9–55.3 million pre-sale estimate, marking the third highest-grossing sale ...

Yale discovers early Velazquez in basement

Gothamist / July 4th, 2010

A donated painting languished in the basement of Yale University for nearly 8 decades before a curator took notice. The unsigned work titled "The Education of the Virgin," given to Yale in 1925, was never displayed because of its poor condition. In 2002, Yale University Art Gallery was preparing ...

Boston Tea Party museum to re-open, bigger and better

ArtfixDaily / July 5th, 2010

One of the pivotal events leading to the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party was commemorated with a once-popular tourist site in Boston Harbor. A recreation of a British tall ship, the brig Beaver, raided by colonial protestors on December 16, 1773, drew 400,000 visitors yearly, most ...

American artists top $68.2 million London auction

Bloomberg / July 1st, 2010

Pop artist Andy Warhol led a 45.6 million pound ($68.2 million) sale at Christie’s International in London Tuesday night. Good quality and low estimates were a deciding edge in helping along the 52-lot sale's 84% sell-though rate. Twenty-five lots exceeded estimates. The silver 1963 silkscreen, ...

Paul Thiebaud, art dealer son of artist, remembered

San Francisco Gate / July 1st, 2010

Art dealer Paul Thiebaud, who handled the creative output of his father, the celebrated California painter Wayne Thiebaud, passed away from cancer June 19. Thiebaud, who was 49, ran galleries in New York and San Francisco's North Beach. He also represented lesser known artists and hosted ...

Vermeer's The Milkmaid helps push Met attendance to 5.24 million

ArtfixDaily / June 30th, 2010

In the midst of a recession economy, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York attracted 5,240,000 visitors during the fiscal year that ended June 30. This is the first year since 2001 that attendance at the Metropolitan has exceeded five million. Among the 30 exhibitions presented at the ...

$42.5 million Montecito estate on the market

ArtfixDaily / June 30th, 2010

A sumptuous reinterpretation of Southern vernacular architecture has been built on spec in the foothills of Montecito, California. Overlooking a wide swath of the Pacific on about 5 acres, stands the 10,797+/- sq.ft main residence, with a 56-foot pool, 2-bedroom guest house, and pool cabana with ...

Race car styling informed Keno furniture line

Chicago Tribune / June 29th, 2010

Antiques specialists Leigh and Leslie Keno are well known for their special brand of enthusiastic interplay with early American furniture. The twin brothers' expertise has been broadcast to 10 million viewers per week in their appearances as appraisers on PBS' popular 'Antiques Roadshow.' A new ...

Johnnie Shand Kydd photographs expose the irresistible Siren City

ArtfixDaily / June 29th, 2010

Tough, dirty, and noisy, Naples is nevertheless a charming city that never fails to make you laugh. Fifty black and white photographs present an evocative tableaux of southern Italian life in "Siren City: Photographs of Naples by Johnnie Shand Kydd," an exhibition opening on June 30, at the ...

"Picasso Looks at Degas" reveals a lifelong artistic adulation

ArtfixDaily / June 28th, 2010

Two of the greatest artists of the modern period are the focus of a ground-breaking exhibition at The Clark, a world-class gem of a museum nestled in The Berkshires. "Picasso Looks at Degas" is the first in-depth exploration of Pablo Picasso’s (1881-1973) unwavering fascination with the life ...

Giant gold coin, Marilyn X-ray, Jackson's glove star in weekend auctions

ArtfixDaily / June 28th, 2010

A wide range of collectibles performed strongly at auctions worldwide over the weekend. One hot lot was the world's largest gold coin, weighing 220 lbs., which fetched $4 million (3,270,000 euros) at Dorotheum in Vienna. The Canadian Maple Leaf coin quadrupled its face value of almost $1 ...

Clear as Mud: Early 20th Century Kentucky Art Pottery

ARTFIXdaily ArtWire / June 27th, 2010

Clear as Mud: Early 20th Century Kentucky Art Pottery, edited by Warren Payne, is a ground-breaking new book on the art pottery produced in Kentucky during the first half of the 20th century. From Cornelison Bybee to Waco, Louisville Pottery Co. (Cherokee) to Hadley, ...