World Records for David Hockney, Aaron Young, Sterling Ruby & Dana Schutz at Phillips de Pury

LONDON.- Phillips de Pury & Company’s October Contemporary Art sales totaled £8,819,900 /$14,129,480 (including premium). The Contemporary Art Day sale saw active bidding with strong results with many works achieving over their pre-sale high estimate and totaled £2,257,000/$3,615,714 (including premium) selling 84% by value and 77 % by lot. “We are pleased to have built on the success of last night and to continue our tradition as Contemporary Art taste-makers. Today’s Day sale saw strong sell through rates with competitive [...]

U.S. Collector and Gallery Owner Larry Gagosian Tops 2010 Art Review Power List

LONDON (REUTERS).- U.S. collector and gallery owner Larry Gagosian has been named the art world’s most powerful figure in the annual ArtReview ranking, dominated this year by established commercial galleries. File photo of US art dealer Larry Gagosian (R) and Rome’s Mayor Walter Veltroni Gagosian has nine galleries around the world after opening a new space in Paris, as well as an office in Hong Kong and a shop in New York. He reclaims the position he held in 2004, [...]

Royal Academy of Arts Announces Jeff Koons as New Honorary Member of the Royal Academy

LONDON.- Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, 1955. He received his B.F.A. at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since his emergence in the 1980s Jeff Koons has blended the concerns and methods of Pop, Conceptual, and appropriation art with craft- making and popular culture to create his own unique iconography, often controversial and always engaging. His work explores contemporary obsessions with sex and desire; race [...]

Norman Dilworth’s First Solo Show in Britain in Almost 30 Years Opens at Laurent Delaye

LONDON.- At 79, Norman Dilworth is still a young artist in Britain. His work has been exhibited in some of the most prestigious museums in Europe, including solo exhibitions twice at both the Mondrian House in Amersfoort, Holland, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His latest museum retrospective was at the Musée Matisse, Cateau-Cambressis, France, in 2007. Yet this solo show is his first in the UK since he left Britain to live in Holland in 1982. It will be [...]

3,500 Courtroom Sketches by Marilyn Church Heading for Library of Congress

NEW YORK (AP).- Marilyn Church didn’t even have to ask Bernard Madoff, Martha Stewart, Woody Allen and John Gotti to sit for their portraits. She simply found a good seat in court and pulled out her pad — then got paid. Soon, the New York courtroom artist’s 3,500 sketches could be heading to the Library of Congress, which said Wednesday that it planned to acquire them and is finalizing agreements with Church. “It’s a great spectrum of all the things [...]

Galerie St. Etienne Shows Works by Max Beckmann’s Student, Marie-Louise Motesiczky

NEW YORK, NY.- Marie-Louise Motesiczky: Paradise Lost & Found is the first American exhibition of paintings by the artist, who was a student of Max Beckmann and a lover of the Nobel-laureate Elias Canetti. Motesiczky, a member of a prominent Jewish aristocratic clan that once formed the financial and cultural backbone of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was driven into exile by the Nazi Anschluss in 1938. Always reluctant to sell her work, she bequeathed her entire artistic legacy to the Marie-Louise [...]

The Audrey Hepburn Stamp: A Portrait of Eternal Beauty to Be Sold by Schlegel Briefmarken

BERLIN (MARKETWIRE).- Audrey Hepburn left an indelible impression — an imprint of gracious compassion and respect, which endures in a fashion as timeless as her heart. In 2002 the German ministry of finance decided to honor Miss Hepburn with a stamp and entered into a contract with the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund (AHCF). Due to an internal breakdown the printing of the 14 million stamps for the German post was ordered prior to obtaining the contractual approvals from the AHCF. [...]

Important Photographic Archive Acquired for Birmingham Central Library

BIRMINGHAM.- Birmingham Central Library has acquired an important archive of photographic work by prominent artist John Blakemore, who was born in Coventry. The archive was acquired directly from the artist for £91,650, of which £42,695 came from the Art Fund. Additional support came from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the Friends of the National Libraries and The University of Derby. The archive will be permanently housed in the new Library of Birmingham when it opens in 2013. The collection includes [...]

Thomas Moran’s Early Landscape of Juniata Valley, Pa, is Acquired by National Gallery of Art

WASHINGTON, DC.- The Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, voted last week to acquire The Juniata, Evening, an exceptional painting done in 1864 by American artist Thomas Moran (1837-1926). Purchased from a private collection with funds from Max and Heidi Berry and Ann and Mark Kington/The Kington Foundation, the Pennsylvania landscape has never been exhibited publicly. It is the second painting by Moran to enter the Gallery’s collection; the first is The Much Resounding [...]

Michelle Obama Says She’s Bringing the Arts to the White House to Lift Young People

WASHINGTON (AP).- First lady Michelle Obama says she’s bringing the arts to the White House to “lift young people up.” Mrs. Obama started a series of White House events last year highlighting different genres of music — from jazz and country to Latin and classical — and this year she kicked off a dance series with performances by the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. All the events include an instructional component for students led by professional artists. “We want to [...]

Ex-J. Paul Getty Museum Curator Marion True’s Trafficking Trial Ends in Italy

ROME (AP).- A Rome judge declared an end Wednesday to the trial of a former J. Paul Getty Museum antiquities curator accused of knowingly acquiring looted art from Italy, citing the expiration of the statute of limitations, defense lawyers said. The 6-year-old case against Marion True was followed with concern by museums worldwide and involved about 35 artifacts acquired by the Los Angeles museum between 1986 and the late 1990s — including bronze Etruscan pieces, frescoes and painted Greek vessels. [...]

New Book Says Painting Stored Behind a Couch for 25 Years may Be a Michelangelo

TONAWANDA (AP).- Could a painting of Mary holding the body of Jesus that hung for years in an upstate New York family’s home really be a 16th century Michelangelo? An Italian art historian thinks so after undertaking years of research, which he documents in a new book, “The Lost Pieta.” Now the painting’s owner, Martin Kober, is encouraging the rest of the art world to take a close look with the hope the work will be universally accepted as a [...]

New and Key Past Works in First Show by Marina Abramović on View at Lisson Gallery

LONDON.- Lisson Gallery presents a new exhibition by Marina Abramović, the first show of Abramović’s work at Lisson Gallery. Comprised of new and key past works in the mediums of video, photographs and sculpture, the show will be in two parts across both Bell Street galleries. 52-54 Bell Street will feature the Rhythm series, from her early performances, exhibited for the first time in its entirety, while 29 Bell Street will feature new work from her Back to Simplicity series. [...]

Sotheby’s Announces the Inaugural Sale of Important Russian Art in New York

NEW YORK, NY.- Sotheby’s presents the inaugural sale of Important Russian Art in New York on 4 November 2010, alongside the major autumn auctions of Impressionist & Modern Art. The sale includes select works by many of the greatest names in 20th-century Russian art. Highlights from the sale will be on view in Moscow 21-23 October before returning to New York for the sale and exhibition, opening 28 October. The Important Russian Art sale is led by Aleksey Kravchenko’s Indian [...]

North Sea Paintings by Distinguished Artist John Virtue on View at Marlborough Fine Art

LONDON.- Marlborough Fine Art presents ‘John Virtue: North Sea Paintings’, the first major exhibition by this distinguished artist to open in London in 5 years. In a striking departure from the huge paintings of London which formed the subject matter of his highly acclaimed exhibition at the National Gallery as Associate Artist in 2005, these new paintings take the vast, dark expanse of the North Sea as a central theme. Throughout his career, Virtue has always painted intensely the areas [...]