What price can we put on the wonder of childhood?
art auction
Posted inIn Brief
Sotheby’s Auction House Goes Private After $3.7 Billion Sale
French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi will soon own one of the world’s largest auction houses after it spent 31 years on the stock exchange.
Posted inOpinion
Will Blockchain Create a More Transparent Art Market or Merely Entice More Investors?
This week, Christie’s announced that it would pilot blockchain technology to record its fall auction season, but will the digital ledger system solve the market’s transparency problems?
Posted inOpinion
Christie’s Top Lots Flop at Auction, Raising Speculation About Market Bubble
This years’s total sales were nearly half those of last year, which some critics say is a symptom of a bloated market with overly ambitious estimates. Even a Van Gogh painting went unsold this year.
Posted inArt
Nothing Is Off-Limits in Hirokage’s Humorous Ukiyo-e Prints
Utagawa Hirokage has a special humor, which, though at times edging on corny, is often sly and even tinged with eroticism.
Posted inNews
Rare Shunga Scroll of Gay Erotic Scenes Goes to Auction
Shunga, the Japanese term for erotic art, was highly popular during the Edo Period, with artists still creating to fill demand even after the government banned the explicit illustrations in 1722.
Posted inArt
An Illustrated Guide to Auction House Terminology
What is “chandelier bidding?” How do third-party guarantees work? And what are the “three D’s?”
Posted inOpinion
What Else Could $180 Million Buy?
The record price paid for Pablo Picasso’s “‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)” (1955) made us wonder what else could $180M buy?
Posted inNews
East Africa Has Its First Major Art Auction
Love them or hate them, auctions often signal a milestone, whether it’s for new media art or work from a specific region. Recently, Circle Art Agency, a Kenyan arts organization, hosted the first major art auction in East Africa. With 47 works from 43 artists, the auction was incredibly successful, garnering a total $216,000, according to Think Africa Press.
Posted inNews
Record Set for Artwork Offered Online Only, $1.98M
There are new signs that collectors are becoming more comfortable with online art sales. Last Friday, June 21, a watercolor by Egon Schiele, “Reclining Woman” (1916), clicked in the highest price yet for an artwork offered in an online-only auction.
Posted inNews
Historic Night at Christie’s as 12 Post-War Artists Set Records, Biggest Sale in History
Tonight, auction world records have been set for 12 artists at Christie’s contemporary evening sale in New York, including records for Basquiat, Pollock, de Kooning, Noland, Guston, and Lichtenstein.
Posted inOpinion
Is China the Undisputed King of the Art Market?
A press release from Artprice, an art market information source, has some interesting stats — even if they sound far too sunny — about the state of art auctions around the world.
