Join Sotheby’s experts and Jack Lunzer, custodian of the Valmadonna Trust Library, for an intimate tour of this fabled collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts.
Something free to do in Manhattan, in the Rockefeller Centre area before the Thanksgiving week-end … free, no tickets required …. beautifully displayed objects of art, most polite and helpfull stuff … nice tiolets … Furniture Fit for Royalty: Important European Furniture, Ceramics, and Carpets, at Christie’s, 10 am – 5 pm, November 15-19, 2008
Christie’s, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-636-2000
Please note that links to auction items usually stop working within 30 days after the auction concludes …
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Posted 2008/10/28, 4:57 pm
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Category: Auctions and Appraisals ·
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Something nice to do in New York on the first week-end in November … walk to 72nd Street and York Avenue, free and no tickets required.
A great exhibition of Impressionist and Modern paintings, beautifully displayed, and nice toilets. The space makes me feel that I am in some SOHO or Chelsea art gallery but I am in the Upper East Side Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, Sotheby’s, 10 am – 5 pm, October 29 – November 2, 2008, Sotheby’s New York, 1334 York Avenue, at 72nd Street, 212-606-7000
There is a branch of Dean and DeLuca on the 10th floor with a lovely out-door terrace to enjoy a cup of coffee … or Matsu Sushi, 411 East 70th Street, New York, 212-744-5454. ….the best values are at lunch from their “lunch specials” from 11am – 4 pm … the sushi rice at Matsu Sushi is a stand-out … with the correct amount of rice wine blended into the sushi rice to give a nice sour and sweet taste, a very tasty sushi. Also they do not serve a huge piece of fish, just a nice size piece … and at the right temperature, i.e., luke warm and not ice cold … very close to Sotheby’s, the Tri-Institutional Friday Noon concerts at Rockefeller University and the numerous hospitals in that area…
Speaking about lunch in this neighborhood, I must recommend the ILLY cafe at the Food Emporium on 69th Street & Third Avenue, very good Italian ILLY coffee, great sandwiches for $6.99, especially the mozzarella and prosciutto, numerous hot soups and $5.99 salad buffet … moreover, a whole roasted D’Artagnan chicken to go for $10.99, etc…
Which brings us to the main reason that auction houses find museum people so attractive: They know where the bodies are buried. In the course of their work they learn who has what important works of art because that’s how they organize their exhibitions. They spend hundreds of hours tracking down objects–some famous, some obscure–and visiting their owners in hopes of borrowing them. In the course of such visits, they might well come upon other works of art that the collector owns.
Auction houses rely on a steady stream of loot to stay in business, so they badly need this insider information. It’s especially valuable given the surprisingly large number of A-list works of art still in private hands. A collector is far more likely to be persuaded to part with his treasures by an ex-museum director with whom he probably already has a relationship than by a cold-calling “expert” from Sotheby’s or Christie’s.
This trend, although a rainmaking boon for the auction houses, might in the long run wind up making life more difficult for museums. The loan exhibition–the big draw for most art museums–is already hard to bring off, given increasing red tape, high insurance costs and fears of terrorism. And it may become a near-impossible task if collectors start to think that the museum director pleading with them to lend a masterpiece today will be an auctioneer badgering them to sell it tomorrow.
Anticipated in the press as the most successful sales to take place in London, June’s Impressionist and Modern Art auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s spectacularly lived up to their billing. While New York remains the centre of the market–as evidenced by the extraordinary totals achieved there last May–London is fast gaining on its New World rival and the buoyancy of the market has meant collectors are offering for sale works of outstanding quality by artists such as Monet, Matisse, Renoir, Rodin and Picasso.
After retiring from truck driving in 1987, Teri Horton devoted much of her time to bargain hunting around the Los Angeles area. Sometimes the bargains were discovered on Salvation Army shelves and sometimes, she willingly admits, at the bottom of Dumpsters.
Even the most stubborn deal scrounger probably would have been satisfied with the rate of return recently offered to her for a curiosity she snagged for $5 in a San Bernardino thrift shop in the early 1990s. A buyer, said to be from Saudi Arabia, was willing to pay $9 million for it, just under an 180 million percent increase on her original investment. Ms. Horton, a sandpaper-voiced woman with a hard-shell perm who lives in a mobile home in Costa Mesa and depends on her Social Security checks, turned him down without a second thought.
Ms. Horton’s find is not exactly the kind that gets pulled from a steamer trunk on the “Antiques Roadshow.” It is a dinner-table-size painting, crosshatched in the unmistakable drippy, streaky, swirly style that made Jackson Pollock one of the most famous artists of the last century. Ms. Horton had never heard of Pollock before buying the painting, but when an art teacher saw it and told her that it might be his work (and that it could fetch untold millions if it were), she launched herself on a single-minded post-retirement career — enlisting, along the way, a forensic expert and a once-powerful art dealer — to have her painting acknowledged as authentic by scholars and the art market.
“Provenance” is a list of the previous owners of a work of art, tracing it from its present location and owner back to the hand of the artist. Provenance has many uses: It can help to determine the authenticity of a work, to establish the historical importance of a work by suggesting other artists who might have seen and been influenced by it, and to determine the legitimacy of current ownership.
The last few lines of an article in the NYT explains very well the appraisal business, which tries to answer the question, “What is it worth?” …
For Michael Ochs, sharing his collection of rock ‘n’ roll photographs with the occasional stranger is his passion, but sharing it with millions is his life. Over the last 30 years the Michael Ochs Archives has grown to become the premier source of musician photography in the world, every day licensing shots of hayseeds and headbangers to illustrate books (about half of recent rock ‘n’ roll books have included photos from the collection), dress up documentaries (like Martin Scorsese’s recent PBS feature on Bob Dylan) and otherwise adorn television programs and feature films (in “Ray,” session sets were based on images from the Ochs Archives). … With tips from industry friends, he would save troves of photographs from labels going under, occasionally rushing to empty file cabinets before the wrecking balls arrived. (Once, when he arrived too late, he researched which garbage trucks went to which city dump.) As Mr. Ochs became more prominent in the field, music insiders made sure extra material would be sent his way. Similarly, several retired and aging photographers, rather than throwing the material out, turned to Mr. Ochs to give their work a proper, permanent home.
Sale, No. 1655, May 2, 2006, 7:00 pm
Christie’s, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-636-2000
Please note that links to auction items usually stop working within 30 days after the auction concludes …
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Posted 2006/05/01, 4:44 pm
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Category: Art, Auctions and Appraisals ·
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Exhibition of photographs at Christie’s, Rockefeller Centre, New York, this week-end … worth a detour …
Photographs by Ansel Adams, Helmut Newton, Edward Curtis, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Peter Beard, Irving Penn, Marion Post Wolcott, and others …
Sale, No. 1625, February 14, 2006, 10:00 am & 2:00 pm
Christie’s, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, 212-636-2000
Please note that links to auction items usually stop working within 30 days after the auction concludes …
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