Saturday, September 27, 2008

PARRISH ART MUSEUM ARTIST'S OPPORTUNITY
Mixed Greens: Artists Choose Artists on the East End
Call for entries to East End artists to exhibit with the jurors in:
Mixed Greens: Artists Choose Artists on the East EndApril 26 – June 14, 2009

In a nod to the changing dynamics of the artistic community and an innovative approach to showcasing the creativity and talent of the East End, the Parrish introduces Mixed Greens: Artists Choose Artists on the East End. This Invitational Exhibition is an open call to artists who are invited to submit up to four works in digital format for consideration. Then a distinguished roster of nine jurors, including John Alexander, Michael Combs, April Gornik, Mary Heilmann, Richard Kalina, Michelle Stuart, Donald Sultan, John Torreano, and Joe Zucker, will review all submissions online and choose one or two artists to visit in the studio. Each of the panel members will then choose a single finalist and make a selection of works by that artist to be included alongside the juror's own work in the Spring show here at the Parrish. There is no participation fee. The exhibition, to be held from April 26 through June 14, 2009, will celebrate the artists and their work. The preview evening festivities on Saturday, April 25, will be open to all members of the community. Please plan on joining us for what promises to be a lively and engaging presentation of the talent of the East End.
Instructions for applying:1. Download the entry form. You will need Microsoft Word to view the document.2. Email the entry form along with your JPEG entry images (up to four) to mixedgreenssubmissions@gmail.com.3. Title your submissions Entries 1, 2, 3, and 4 to correspond with the entry numbers on the submission form.4. The deadline for submission is October 15, 2008. Click here to download the entry form

Kathy Fuld, Wife of Lehman CEO, to Auction Artworks
(here comes the fall out)
By Lindsay Pollock

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Kathy Fuld, the art-collecting wife of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld, is selling a $20 million set of rare Abstract Expressionist drawings at a November auction, according to two art dealers.
Christie's International, which is offering the works in New York on Nov. 12, declined to reveal the seller's identity. The auction house announced the sale of the drawings, including three by Willem de Kooning, four days after Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history on Sept. 15. Two New York-based dealers who specialize in similar works said Fuld is the seller. They declined to be named.
``These kinds of drawings are extremely rare,'' said Amy Cappellazzo, co-head of Christie's Postwar and contemporary art department. ``The collector considers drawing as a primary art form.''
Richard Fuld earned $34.4 million in 2007 running the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank -- pay that lawyers said may be the target of lawsuits by creditors. He sold Lehman shares that were worth $247 million a year and a half ago for less than $500,000 last week after the stock price collapsed.
The Christie's auction includes the de Koonings, five Barnett Newmans, four Arshile Gorkys and four Agnes Martins. De Kooning's kinetic orange-haired 1951 ``Woman'' in graphite, charcoal, pastel and oil on paper is expected to fetch as much as $4 million.
The collection was assembled over a number of years, according to Cappellazzo, who said the seller first approached Christie's and rival Sotheby's about an auction in the summer. Christie's completed the deal in August, she said. Fuld is well known in the art world for her passion for works on paper. High-Level Buyer ``She buys at the highest level,'' said New York dealer Joan Washburn. ``If you have a great drawing, you offer it to her.'' Fuld is vice-chairman of the board of trustees at New York's Museum of Modern Art and has promised a number of artworks to the museum including works by Jasper Johns and Louise Bourgeois. Phone calls and emails to the press offices of Lehman and MoMA seeking comment from Fuld were unanswered.
Among the drawings slated for sale is a 1946-47 Gorky drawing titled ``Study for Agony I,'' estimated to sell for up to $2.8 million. The drawing is a study for ``Agony,'' a 1947 red and brown abstract painting owned by MoMA.
Newman's 1960 black-and-white ink-on-paper ``Untitled'' is expected to fetch up to $2 million. The same work sold at Sotheby's in New York in 1997 for $244,500, according to the Artnet pricing database. Billionaire Ronald Lauder is listed among prior owners in the 2004 Yale University Press ``Barnett Newman: a Catalogue Raisonne,'' a directory of the artist's output.
The Fulds lent two other Newmans to the artist's 2002 retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, curated by Ann Temkin, who was recently named MoMA's chief curator.
Larger Collection
Dealers say the works at auction are a small part of a larger collection which also includes contemporary artists such as Brice Marden. A New York dealer said a Jackson Pollock drawing owned by Fuld was offered for sale this summer at the Art Basel art fair held in June in Switzerland. The works are likely to sell well, some dealers say. ``Judging from the images, I'd say the drawings are all at least A-minus works and my feeling is they will find homes,'' said New York art adviser Thea Westreich.
Since the Lehman collapse, Kathy Fuld has kept up her public appearances. Guests noticed her on Tuesday night at a farewell cocktail party at MoMA for retiring curator Kynaston McShine.
(Lindsay Pollock writes on the art market for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Lindsay Pollock in New York at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com. Last Updated: September 26, 2008 15:33 EDT

Wednesday, September 17, 2008


Wall Street Journal September 17, 2008
Christie's Morphs Into a Dealer

New York
In a move that upends traditional power relationships at a tremendously nervous time in the art world, Christie's auction house is going into the gallery business. Last year, Christie's International (The Group), the parent company of the London-based auctioneer, bought cutting-edge London gallery Haunch of Venison. Friday, backed by the seemingly bottomless pockets of Christie's billionaire owner, Francois Pinault, it opened a huge satellite gallery in New York with an impressive array of Abstract Expressionist masterworks on loan from top museums and collectors. As far as a host of art dealers and advisers are concerned, here comes trouble.

With Haunch of Venison, "auction galleries are crossing over a line that's always been faintly there in the sand," says Todd Levin of New York's Levin Art Group, which advises contemporary-art collectors such as financier Adam Sender. Traditionally, auction houses have been arm's-length brokers of art; transparency ruled. Art dealers have always been understood to have a financial stake in what they are selling. With Haunch, Christie's auction house now has a vested interest in some of its merchandise. "There's a little bit of distrust about auction galleries getting involved in artist's careers," says Priyanka Mathew, director of New York's Aicon Gallery, which deals in the currently fast-rising field of Indian and Pakistani art. With Haunch, she says, the attitude is "watch and wait."
Christie's sold a blockbuster $3.5 billion in art and antiques in the six months ended July 31, a 10% increase from the year-earlier period, but its annual pace of growth is slowing -- and art dealers tend to have an edge over auction galleries in a down market. So is buying Haunch partly a recession hedge for Christie's? "In a volatile economic climate, private sales can be considered attractive," says Robert Fitzpatrick, Haunch's international managing director. Collectors are attracted by the "discretion," he says, as they don't want to be seen parting with pieces they are known to own. Buyers, too, like to spend more time with potential purchases in a soft market, "coming back to look" at the art, he says.
Of course, Christie's, like its chief rivals Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury, has done some business privately for years. With Haunch, the auctioneer has made a "strategic decision," says Mr. Fitzpatrick, to turn over virtually all of those private sales in contemporary and modern art -- and even some Impressionist art -- to the gallery. Christie's private sales totaled more than $250 million last year.
And Haunch's business may turn out to be even more lucrative than that, since one of its clients, Roman Abramovich, is one of the world's biggest art buyers right now. The billionaire, who had one of the earliest VIP tours of the gallery in New York, reportedly paid a record $83.6 million for a Francis Bacon work at auction earlier this year.
Haunch, which also has sizable outposts in Berlin and Zurich, enters the New York fray when the decades-old rivalry between dealers and auctioneers has turned nasty. Dealer Andrea Rosen, at a panel at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this year, called auction houses "sharks . . . and opportunists," going after some artists like "the fish that's easiest to get," even as Phillips Chairman Simon de Pury and Christie's Deputy Chairman Amy Cappellazzo sat beside her. Haunch was tossed out of the prestigious Frieze art fair when the gallery was acquired by Christie's, and it isn't eligible for the powerhouse Art Basel and Art Basel Miami fairs. The issue, says Charlie Finch, art critic for online magazine Artnet.com, is that while the auctioneer says it will remain completely uninvolved in gallery business, "Dealers worry Haunch of Venison is just a fig leaf for Christie's." In a worst-case scenario for dealers, Haunch of Venison could raid artists, or build its own stars, cutting out dealer middlemen entirely -- or even bid against dealers at Christie's auctions with insider information.
Christie's stresses that Haunch of Venison's gallery business of representing artists and their estates is managed independently from the auction house. Haunch is a wholly owned subsidiary not of the auctioneer but of its parent company, Christie's International (The Group). (Ed Dolman, Christie's chief executive officer, oversees both.) Mr. Fitzpatrick says that while Haunch dealers have been and will be seen bidding at Christie's sales, they won't have inside information and will place bids only for clients, not for inventory.
The ties between the two entities, geographically and historically at least, are close. Haunch is in the same New York building as the auctioneer, in a 20,000-square-foot airy duplex at 1230 Avenue of the Americas. Haunch co-founder Graham Southern used to head Christie's contemporary art department in London. In 2002 he partnered with Harry Blain, a financier and friend of Damien Hirst's, to launch the gallery. Haunch of Venison, named after an address in London, kept a low profile until October 2004. Then, Mr. Blain placed bids on behalf of Mr. Pinault, the owner of Christie's, at Mr. Hirst's famous Pharmacy auction of objects from his restaurant of that name. Mr. Pinault paid $2.2 million, twice the high estimate, for "The Fragile Truth," a drug-filled medicine cabinet.
Haunch represents, in some cities, such well-known artists as Bill Viola, Richard Long and Keith Tyson. Its director of exhibitions, Michael Rooks, adds that a handful of dealers and their artists have been pleased to hear that some works by artists the gallery doesn't represent will be prominently featured in its New York show of contemporary sculpture, scheduled to open in November. There are "delicacies" to the situation, he notes, but even rival dealers realize "we offer a different kind of platform" for their artists.
Certainly, Haunch gives Christie's some business advantages: It offers spacious, striking venues to showcase work year-round, not just prior to the big spring and fall auctions. It allows the company to make careers, spotting art stars and showing their work internationally before they hit the auction block. Insiders expect the art world to change as a result. Haunch, notes Mr. Levin, "has money to throw at artists like nobody's business."
Ms. Peers writes on art and culture for The Wall Street Journal.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

At Jacobson Howard
33 East 68th Street New York, NY 10065
(212) 570-2362

Vincent Romaniello

Lynn Dunham

Gabriel J. Shuldiner

Gregory Coates


Garth Grennan at Mark Borghi Fine Art in Bridgehampton
brought this exhibition to my attention.
Artists on the blog who share an aesthetic with Bram.

Gregory Coates and myself


“Jean-Francois Lyotard, the author of ‘The Post-Modern Condition’, notes that the knowledge gained through direct physical engagement, rather than through abstract reasoning, takes on special significance in our age in which the immateriality of the image world demeans embodied experiences. [Bogart’s work] reasserts painting’s potential to open for us a space of speculation, intuition and analysis.”

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

I recommend this exhibit for any of my blog readers who can get to the city for this. I will not be able to be there so I am hoping one of you will be there to take photos for me.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Artwork (I use the term loosely) which needs to be flushed. You have got to be kidding me.


From the BBC Wednesday, 13 August 2008
Inflatable feces raises a stink

McCarthy is renowned for his giant inflatable artworks
A giant inflatable dog turd brought down a power line after being blown away from a Swiss museum. The artwork, entitled Complex Shit, was carried 200 metres on the night of 31 July, reportedly breaking a greenhouse window before it landed again.
The sculpture, by American artist Paul McCarthy, was equipped with a safety system that should have deflated it. The fake feces has been returned and will remain on display at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern until October. McCarthy is well known for his inflatable artworks, two of which - Blockhead and Daddies Bighead - were displayed outside the Tate Modern in London in 2003.
The Zentrum Paul Klee, which opened in 2005, houses a collection of about 4,000 works by the noted Swiss painter.

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