AMESBURY, Mass. (AP) – A mixed-media painting attributed to Pablo Picasso has been sold after spending 50 years in a closet in a house in Maine. The Boston Globe reports that John McInnis Auctioneers, based in Massachusetts, auctioned the painting titled Le Tricorne on June 26.
ALLENTOWN, Pa. – A moment of silence, please, for the good old auction.
Oh, they’re still around. But the in-person auction, with its traditional patter and gavel-banging and crowd buzz, has been giving way in recent years to online business — a change accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, which, according to one study, has advanced the pace of online commerce by two years.
CINCINNATI – Cowan’s and Hindman Auctions have announced a new era in Arms and Armor with the addition of three new arms historians. Tim Carey has been appointed as the new Director and Specialist of the department, while long-time Cowan’s consultant Tim Prince will formally join the team, along with Ashley Hlebinsky, as Senior Specialists. Continue reading
PHILADELPHIA — Building on its success in 2020, Freeman’s will continue some of its most celebrated auctions. Philadelphia’s auction house has announced a wide range of auctions starting in early 2021 and continuing into the summer.
CHICAGO – Hindman reports a highly successful 2020 despite the challenges that faced all auction houses during the global pandemic. The year’s schedule included 100+ auctions and $64.9 million in sales, and the auction house saw exceptional participation from online bidders throughout the world. More than 55 percent of successful bids were a result of online bidding activity, and the firm saw an increase in online engagement by more than 10 percent. The company consistently exceeded expectations throughout the year with the majority of sales surpassing presale estimates.
PHILADELPHIA – At the end of their 2020 sale season, Freeman’s is reflecting on 2020 and the number of company milestones achieved. By establishing a seamless transition from in-person to online-only sales and pivoting towards highly targeted digital marketing campaigns, the company set a high bar this year that they hope to surpass in 2021.
LOS ANGELES – Julien’s Auctions has announced Musicares® Charity Relief Auction will take place live in Beverly Hills on Jan. 29th.
NEW YORK – Christie’s will host “Monet / Richter,” a virtual selling exhibition celebrating the talents of the two groundbreaking artists that will be presented both online on Dec. 20, and in person with select highlights. Visit the private sale viewing room here.
The exhibition will address the visual dialogue between the work of Claude Monet and Gerhard Richter with juxtaposed canvases that pose a fundamental challenge to the distinction between abstraction and representation. Alongside the works on view in-person, the full exhibition may be viewed in an immersive digital experience.
David Kleiweg de Zwaan, Head of Private Sales, Impressionist and Modern Art, Americas, remarked: “This is an exciting endeavor that strives to provide a discourse between the work of two pioneering artists, and we are grateful to the collecting community for contributing to this project. The objective of “Monet/Richter” is to position ethereal canvasses – by both artists – within thought provoking juxtapositions, summoning questions about the basis of abstraction and figuration. In doing so, the exhibition recontextualizes Monet’s oeuvre, and particularly the later Nympheas paintings. With their shallow depth of field, luminous color and dematerialized form, Monet dissolved the traditional distinctions between figure and ground to make the canvas an arena for pure chromatic and gestural expression. This is a profound innovation echoed in Richter’s masterful abstract canvasses.”
Alessandro Diotallevi, Director of Private Sales, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Americas, continued: “This exhibition is a visual journey into the works of two of art history’s greatest painters. It will underscore the artistic singularity achieved by both Monet and Richter, while pointing to the harmony between their work. As a whole, Monet/Richter demonstrates how timeless – and yet contemporary – the works of both artists are.”
Working a century apart, Claude Monet and Gerhard Richter both redefined painting for their respective eras. The great French Impressionist, rejected by the conservative Académie des Beaux-Arts in the 1860s, sought to express his perceptions before nature as truly and immediately as possible. Thinking in terms of light, color and shape rather than figurative form, he said, “I like to paint as a bird sings.” He freed himself from convention, and, in his monumental late works, paved the way for the Abstract Expressionists’ vision of painting as surface, creating luminous arenas of shimmering light and color.
Richter, working since the 1960s, has pursued arguably the most profound enquiry into the nature and purpose of painting in the postwar era. Working in dialogue with genres as diverse as Pop art, photography, and landscape painting, his frequent cynicism is balanced by an enduring belief in art as a force for hope. Taking up Monet’s mantle, he has posed a fundamental challenge to the distinction between abstraction and representation. Today, he is recognized as one of the greatest artists of his generation: a conceptualist and colorist in equal measure, who breathed new life into painting at a critical moment in its history.
NEW YORK – Christie’s has announced its Asian Art Week, a series of auctions, viewings and events, from Sept. 4-29. This season presents 12 auctions featuring over 1,000 objects from 5,000 years of art spanning all epochs and categories of Asian art comprising Chinese archaic bronzes through Japanese and Korean art to contemporary Indian painting.
LONDON – Due to the recent devastating news from the region, Christie’s will offer its support for the art community in Lebanon and stage a charity auction to benefit the efforts to rebuild the cultural scene in Beirut under the title “We Are All Beirut – A Charity Auction.” The online auction will be held late October to first half of November 2020.