MIAMI (AP) – If you show it, will they come?

That’s what gallery directors are wondering as they prepare for Art Basel Miami Beach amid a struggling international economy. Over 200 galleries will show their best work and hope for high sales at the annual art fair running from Dec. 4-7, despite an uncertain art market.

Art Basel organizers say the economic downturn sweeping the world is fairly recent and galleries have had to plan their booths at the fair six months ahead of time, so they don’t expect changes to those plans. But galleries are waiting to see how sales will go.

“It’s obviously more of a buyer’s market,” said Marc Spiegler, co-director for the Miami Beach fair and the annual Art Basel held in Switzerland. “I have been talking to a lot of collectors. They feel it’s a better time to buy art.”

Sluggish sales at recent auctions in New York may be a sign that the years where collectors paid exorbitant prices for high art are over. One of the effects of the economy may be more reasonable prices for art, which may attract more serious collectors, who previously wouldn’t or couldn’t pay the huge amounts of cash for artwork.

At the auctions, some work sold for tens of millions of dollars, while others sold lower than presale estimates and many did not sell at all. At the Frieze Art Fair in London in October, auctions of contemporary art at Sotheby’s and Christie’s generated substantially less money than predicted and many works remained unsold.

All this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Art world observers have been predicting a crash since the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis began. Many of the buyers driving the art sales frenzy were hedge fund and private equity millionaires, who were among the first to suffer economic hardship.

But no matter, Spiegler says, gallery owners and directors know how to survive the financial crisis.

“I think most people who run galleries are by nature optimists,” he says. “Most of the people who are running the kinds of galleries we deal with have been through ups and downs of the economy. People will find a way.”

Some say the economy may change the fair’s atmosphere.

It usually “has euphoria and urgency that may not be there this year,” said Ron Warren, director and partner at Mary Boone Gallery in New York. “Maybe this year Miami may be a little more contemplative … thinking about works of art than a buying frenzy.”

Other galleries are using this year as a gauge for the next.

“Next year will be dependent on what happens this year,” said Michael Findlay, director of New York’s Acquavella Galleries.

Findlay, who is bringing 20 pieces for the show including works by artists Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, said he will make the gallery’s participation as strong and as interesting as it is made for any other art fair, but he is not tailoring his selection of art for the fair because of the economy.

But some gallery owners say sales may suffer because buyers may not be willing to spend a lot of money in hard economy times.

“I don’t think it will be the same amount of sales as it was last year,” CRG Gallery owner Carla Chammas says.

If the fall auctions are any indication, Chammas may be right. For the two-week period, Sotheby’s reported taking in a total of $411.5 million, under its low estimate of $688.4 million, and selling 448 lots out of 866. Christie’s reported a total of $374.5 million, below its $686.7 million low estimate. It sold 630 items out of 990.

To safeguard against risk, both houses lowered guarantees – an undisclosed price promised to sellers whether their work sells or not.

Experts said prices were down 25-35 percent overall, but there were some significant sales, including Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition, which sold for $60 million, setting a record for the artist and for any Russian artwork sold at auction.

The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York refused to comment on the effect the economy may have on sales at the fair. A MoMA spokeswoman said that usually a number of its curators go to Art Basel.

Bonnie Clearwater, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, said she uses the fair to build relationships and to get to know dealers. Even if she wants to buy work, it must be approved by an acquisition committee first, she says.

“I am always interested in understanding art in the larger cultural context. It’s just part of my education and my awareness. Sometimes a show may come out of that,” Clearwater says. The museum has bought work almost every year at the fair.

Meanwhile, Miami-based collector Craig Robins said the financial crisis might be an opportunity for art collectors to be less materialistic. To him, Art Basel is a “social experience” he has attended for the last 10 years.

“I think that universally in just about every facet of the world economy that I can think of at the moment, values are down and transactions are less,” Robins says. “To think that art would be immune from that would probably be unwise.”

Robins is a developer who has assisted in creating Design Miami, which is a design fair that coincides with both the Art Basel fairs in Switzerland and Miami Beach. He says great art will always have value.

“We’ll weed out the less sincere people, the less sincere collectors, and we’ll also probably weed out some of the less sincere artists,” Robins says. “It’s going to be a very hard time in the sense that people are going to suffer, but at the end its going to make us stronger, more judicious, more intensely focused on quality and we’ll probably have a better market because of it.”

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AP-CS-11-23-08 1912EST

RENO, Nev. (AP) – Charles B. Gillespie’s iconic California Gold Rush artwork is no longer a family secret.

Historians are hailing the obscure 49er’s extensive collection of sketches and oil paintings after a descendant decided to put it up for sale this fall.

“This is an important archive, particularly the sketches, which are charming and historically significant,” Scott Shields, chief curator of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, Calif., said in an e-mail.

For decades, the pieces were tucked away in the home of Gillespie’s great-great grandson, Dick Rogers of Bowling Green, Ohio – virtually unknown to historians and others. Now, Rogers is working with a Reno dealer, Fred Holabird, to try to sell the collection intact to a museum in hopes the public can finally have a chance to view it.

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NEW YORK (AP) – The sagging demand for high-end art at the fall auctions could signal a return to saner prices in the market after the frenzied buying of the last few years.

Art experts say the lower prices and unsold works at Sotheby’s and Christie’s over the past two weeks may be a healthy development.

“The truth is that for serious collectors with vision and some cash, this is an opportune time to buy important works of art for more reasonable prices,” said Jo Backer Laird, a former general counsel at Christie’s, now with the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler.

In contrast to previous years when it’s been standing room only, the auction houses had empty seats at their sales of impressionist, modern, postwar and contemporary art.

Many works failed to attract even a single buyer  among them, Francis Bacon’s Study for Self-Portrait, estimated at $40 million – or sold below their estimates.

Still, the picture wasn’t totally bleak. Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition sold for $60 million, setting a record for the artist and for any Russian artwork sold at auction.

And while prices were down 25 percent to 35 percent overall, according to art consultant David Nash, there were some very significant sales, including $20.8 million for Juan Gris’ Book, Pipe and Glasses and $18 million for Pablo Picasso’s Two Figures (Marie-Therese and her sister reading).

The fall auctions serve as a barometer of the art market because they attract buyers from all over the world. For the two-week period, Sotheby’s reported taking in a total of $411.5 million, under its low estimate of $688.4 million, and selling 448 lots out of 866. Christie’s reported a total of $374.5 million, below its $686.7 million low estimate. It sold 630 items out of 990.

To safeguard against risk, both houses lowered guarantees _ an undisclosed price promised to sellers whether their work sells or not.

“In light of the financial turmoil, Sotheby’s and Christie’s did a very good job of persuading sellers to recognize the climate in the market and put on much lower reserves than they had agreed to,” said Nash of the Mitchell-Innes & Nash gallery. The reserve is the lowest undisclosed price the consignor agrees to sell a work.

He called the sales “quite encouraging” and said they demonstrated “there’s still quite an active market.”

Megan Fox Kelly, who runs a Madison Avenue art advisory firm, said the auction results marked a correction in price levels and collectors’ expectations rather than a “dramatic or disastrous downturn.”

“When a very sophisticated Yves Klein [see related article on this Web site] sells for $21 million and a beautiful John Currin draws excited bidding that pushed it past its high estimate, we see a level of strength in the market and a level of discernment and connoisseurship among collectors,” she said.

Prices have risen sharply for contemporary art over the past two years, with Bacon’s Triptych, 1976 selling for $86.2 million to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich in May and a group of works by Damien Hirst fetching almost $200 million at a London auction in September.

According to Nash, that frenzied buying has kept away a number of serious collectors such as financier Eli Broad and Gap clothing founder Don Fisher, who have jumped back in and were seen at the recent auctions.

“I’m very impressed with the way the market has stabilized,” he said. “It’s at a lower level but it’s a real market.”

Nash said the number of buyers has shrunk considerably since last spring. Nonetheless, he noted that $470 million worth of impressionist and modern paintings changed hands at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. And while many prices were lower, “in a way this is a healthy development,” he said. “I think that the excesses of the last two years have really evaporated.”
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On the Net:
www.christies.com
www.sothebys.com

 

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AP-CS-11-14-08 1505EST

NEW YORK (AP) – On Day 2 of the fall auction season, a Russian masterpiece expected to sell for up to $3 million at auction did not find a buyer Wednesday, further underscoring the impact of the global financial crisis on the art market.
Not one hand went up when View of St. Petersburg by Alexei Petrovich Bogoliubov was offered at Sotheby’s morning sale of important Russian works from the impressionist and modern periods.

Many other works sold at or below their pre-sale estimates; others did not sell at all. Final results were unavailable because sales were still under way.

It was the second day of lackluster bidding at the annual fall art season. On Monday, Sotheby’s kicked off the season with masterpieces by Edgar Degas, Kazimir Malevich and Edvard Munch that fetched impressive prices. But a high percentage also went unsold – 25 works did not sell while 45 did.

 

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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) – Two portraits whose authenticity was in doubt have been verified as real van Goghs, the museum named for the Dutch master confirmed Friday.

One portrait is the face and torso of a woman in a hat. In the second, a lady sits with gloved hands folded in her lap.
Because the themes were so common in the 19th century and the paintings had little similarity to the rest of the work by Vincent van Gogh, their authorship was in doubt, said spokeswoman Natalie Bos of the Van Gogh Museum.

However, a review of physical and historical evidence showed van Gogh painted them, probably in the spring of 1886 while he was studying under the painter Fernand Cormon in Paris.

Chemical analysis showed the paint was identical to other works definitely attributed to van Gogh in that period.
On the back of one of the portraits was the stamp of a paint merchant near where van Gogh lived with his brother Theo at that time, the museum said in a statement.

The picture frames also were by the same manufacturer as other confirmed van Goghs of that period, Bos said.
A thorough review of van Gogh’s work turned up other pieces that were stylistically similar.

“The combined weight of all this evidence offers convincing grounds for the reattribution of these two female portraits to Van Gogh,” the museum said. The identity of the women “remains a mystery.”

Although van Gogh is now seen as one of history’s greatest painters, few recognized his talent during his lifetime, and he was increasingly troubled by mental illness. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1890 when he was 37.

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AP-CS-10-31-08 1438EDT  

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has sent a painting by cubist Fernand Leger back to the heirs of a Jewish art collector in France, after concluding it had been stolen by the Nazis during World War II.

The museum had owned the 1911 Leger painting Smoke Over Rooftops since 1961. But after a decade of detective work, the institute decided to return it to the heirs of noted Parisian collector Alphonse Kann, who died in 1948.

“Having researched this to the end of the road, we decided we had to return the painting; it was the right thing to do,” Kaywin Feldman, director of the institute, told the Star Tribune for a story published on Oct. 30.

In 1997, the museum received a letter claiming the painting had been part of Kann’s collection that was confiscated by the Nazis after he fled Paris for London. Kann got much of his art back after the war, but not the Leger, now worth about $2.8 million.

The Leger was bequeathed to the institute in 1961 by Minneapolis businessman Putnam Dana McMillan, who had bought it from the Buchholz Gallery in New York in 1951.

It took years for the institute to determine if the claim was legitimate. Smoke Over Rooftops was a theme Leger painted at least six times, so it wasn’t clear at first if it was the same one Kann had owned.

The research took years of scrutiny of Nazi-era documents, gallery and auction records in four countries.

It’s not an unusual dilemma for a museum. According to the Association of Art Museum Directors, U.S. museums identified in their collections 22 works between 1998 and July 2006 that had been stolen by the Nazis. The art was either returned to heirs or settlements were reached, in some cases allowing the art to remain at the museums.

Investigators established that after Kann fled Paris, the Nazis confiscated the bulk of his collection, a trove so extensive that the Nazis’ inventory of it ran to 60 typed pages. A Paris art dealer, Galerie Leiris, bought the Leger at an auction in 1942 and later sold it to Buchholz Gallery.
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Minneapolis Institute of Arts: http://www.artsmia.org
Association of Art Museum Directors: http://www.aamd.org
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Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com

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ATHENS, Greece (AP) – A 17th-century El Greco painting that recently was purchased by a foundation set up under the will of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis went on display at the National Art Gallery in Athens on Wednesday.

The Coronation of the Virgin was bought for an undisclosed sum this summer by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, said its president, Anthony Papadimitriou. He said the seller was an unidentified U.S. dealer.

Papadimitriou said the oval shaped oil painting will be displayed at the National Gallery for the next two years before being moved to a new cultural center the foundation is building in Athens.

“This is a unique work from Greco’s mature period,” he said. It is one of only nine paintings by the Cretan-born El Greco displayed in Greece.

Born in 1541, El Greco – whose real name was Domenikos Theotokopoulos – worked in Italy and Spain. His art, with elongated figures, vibrant colors and a disregard for the classical rules of painting, was prized during his lifetime but later fell out of favor. It regained strong acclaim in the 20th century.

Gallery director Marina Lambraki-Plaka said the painting was part of El Greco’s personal collection from his workshop in Spain, where the painter lived from 1577 until his death in 1614.

It was made as a study for a large-scale painting on the same theme, in a church in the Spanish town of Illescas. Lambraki-Plaka said the work appeared at auction in 1913 and passed through various hands before entering the collection of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.

A report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime alleged last year that the late Marcos illegally amassed between $5 billion and $10 billion before he was ousted. When the dictator was overthrown in 1986, the painting was auctioned on behalf of the U.S. government and bought by its previous owner.

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AP-ES-10-22-08 1118EDT

LONDON (AP) – The mood was frosty at London’s Frieze Art Fair. Bidders were sparse at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Even Andy Warhol’s multicolored skulls failed to lift the art world’s gloom.

A week of slowing sales and sagging prices suggests the global financial meltdown has finally ended the art-market boom that saw paintings and sculptures become must-have commodities for the world’s elite.

At Sotheby’s and Christie’s – where price records have tumbled regularly in recent years – the major autumn auctions of contemporary art generated at least a third less money than predicted, with many works going unsold.

“A lot of the froth and hype has gone from the contemporary market,” Melanie Gerlis, art market editor of The Art Newspaper in London, said Monday.

Art world observers have been predicting a crash since the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis began rippling around the world. Many of the buyers driving the art world sales frenzy were hedge fund and private equity millionaires – among the first to suffer as the credit crunch took hold.

But prices stayed high, thanks in part to Russian and Middle Eastern buyers who were insulated from the worst of the economic woes.

In May, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought two paintings by Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud for a total of $120 million. Last month, a Sotheby’s auction of works by Britart star Damien Hirst defied market jitters by generating almost $200 million.

Now, however, the economic crisis has spread around the world, bringing stock market turmoil, failing banks – and plunging art prices – in its wake.

Christie’s postwar and contemporary sale Sunday raised just under $55.5 million, against a presale estimate of $100 million to $132 million. Twenty-one of the 47 lots failed to sell.

Sotheby’s contemporary sale last Friday raised a total of $38 million, below the presale estimate of $54 million to $75 million. The star lot, Warhol’s pop-art paintings of human skulls, sold for $7.5 million, below the estimate of $8.7 million to $12.2 million.

Both auction houses said they were pleased with the results, which some observers had predicted might be even worse.

Cheyenne Westphal, head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s Europe, said bidding had been “rational.” She said that while presale estimates had proved overoptimistic, “the sale was assembled in a very different economic environment from that which prevailed today.”

William Ruprecht, Sotheby’s chief executive officer, said “there’s no question that there’s a reduction in price that some people are willing to pay for objects.”

“But there’s also no question that there’s an awful lot of interest in important works of art,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview in New York.

“I do not look at the marketplace … as in any sense frozen or not moving forward, be it with some price adjustments, because that’s what’s happening. There’s a price adjustment going on in a number of categories where there’s been big price appreciation,” Ruprecht said.

He added that the demand and interest from the United States was “a surprise to us” and that some longtime collectors, particularly in the U.S., see the falling prices as an opportunity to find a bargain.

Christie’s said the last few weeks had shown that prices for artworks were “finding a new level,” but added it remained “cautiously optimistic” about upcoming sales.

“We are seeing more selective bidding which represents a slowdown in the growth seen in recent years, as opposed to any decline,” the auction house said in a statement from New York. “We have encouraged sellers to agree to reasonable and attractive estimates in forthcoming sales, as is standard in our aim of matching demand with supply in the auction marketplace.”

At auctioneer Phillips de Pury, Saturday’s contemporary art sale generated only $8.6 million, less than a third of the presale estimate. The auction house blamed the extreme financial market volatility, which it said was leading buyers to take a “wait- and-see” attitude.

Nothing symbolized the modern art boom like Frieze, four days of champagne, chitchat, celebrity – and, of course, art – that has become one of the world’s most glamorous art fairs since it was founded six years ago.

The glitter quotient remained high this year, as everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow and Sofia Coppola to Abramovich and his gallery-owning girlfriend Daria Zhukova came to inspect the work of 1,000 international artists in a tented mini-city erected in London’s Regent’s Park.

The fair did not release sales totals, but said the figures had “exceeded expectations.”

But attendees said the mood was less frenzied than in recent years, when many pieces were snapped up in the first few hours.

“It’s like art fairs used to be,” said Tom Heman of New York gallery Metro Pictures. “We’re able to have much more of a dialogue about the work.”

Some galleries even said they were glad to see the end of the feeding-frenzy atmosphere.

“It is nice that it’s going back to normal and that it’s time to talk about art again, instead of investment,” said Claus Andersen of Andersen’s Contemporary in Copenhagen.

The market’s next test will come in a month, when Christie’s and Sotheby’s hold sales of impressionist and modern art in New York. Sotheby’s auction includes Pablo Picasso’s Harlequin, which is expected to fetch more than $30 million.

The last such sales, in May, generated more than $500 million between them.

Some dealers remain optimistic amid the gloom. Hauser & Wirth, a leading contemporary art gallery with showrooms in London and Zurich, said it had had its best Frieze week ever, with several million dollars in sales of works by Subodh Gupta, Louise Bourgeois, Paul McCarthy and other artists.

“Quality (art) to committed collectors will always sell,” said spokesman Roger Tatley. “If it’s a moment to separate the wheat from the chaff, the high quality pieces from the overinflated works, then that’s a good thing.”

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Associated Press writer Ula Ilnytzky in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-10-20-08 2012EDT  

ROME (AP) – A Renoir painting stolen in 1975 was recovered and three people were arrested on a tip from an art critic who had been asked to value it, Italy’s police art squad said Friday.

The work by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir is worth some $735,000, art squad head Gen. Giovanni Nistri said. It was stolen from a restorer’s lab in Milan, where the Milanese owners had sent it for repairs.

“It’s not one of those paintings of great value,” he told reporters at a presentation in Rome. “The value of the artwork is cultural rather than commercial.”

The painting of a seated nude woman was found this summer after the people who had it contacted the critic to have it appraised before selling it, the Carabinieri paramilitary police said.

The critic alerted the Carabinieri’s art squad, and officers were waiting when the painting was removed from a bank vault in northern Italy for the appraisal.

Three people were arrested on suspicion of receiving stolen goods. They are a 68-year-old woman who manages an art gallery, and two men previously known to police for other crimes, Nistri said.

The painting will be returned to its owners. Its date was not given. Renoir died in 1919.

Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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