chinese and indian contemporary art
Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Totals $84.8 Million
(artdaily.org)
LONDON - This evening, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale brought the exceptionally strong total of £54,074,450 / $84,761,700 / €61,461,160 – well in excess of pre-sale expectations (Estimate: £32,157,000-44,986,000), establishing the second highest total for a February Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s. The auction achieved remarkable sell-through rates: 97.9% by lot and 99.4% by value – the highest ever for a various owners sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s London. Overall, 21 new artist records were set.
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Warhol help Sotheby's auction top $134 million at auction
(The New York Times) by Carol Vogel
It was the sale of the season. When a seminal Warhol — one of the artist’s first silk-screen paintings — came on the block at Sotheby’s auction of contemporary art on Wednesday night, the auctioneer, Tobias Meyer, opened bidding at $6 million and was stunned when a bidder instantly doubled it.
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Collectors like nothing better than a good economic downturn
(The Economist)
It is the world’s most important contemporary art fair. Art Basel this year attracted 61,000 collectors, curators and art afficionados—more than ever before. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the five-day fair which closed on June 14th, drew over 300 galleries from 29 countries, showing works by more than 2,500 artists. To many it must have seemed as if the economic recession was happening elsewhere.
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A Scarcity of Goods Hovers Over Art Market
(Herald Tribune) by Souren Melikian
Some auction house executives must secretly wish their problem was the recession. But it is not. The only real threat hanging over the art market became evident as seldom before in this week’s sales of Impressionist and Modern art in New York. It is the drying up of art supplies, and that has little to do with the recession. The goods simply aren’t there anymore. Mostly locked up in museums or scattered worldwide, they surface in bits and pieces at ever more widely spaced intervals.
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TEFAF confirms art market remains solid
Just one more day to go and TEFAF can look back at a successful edition, despite the fact that it toke place in the most serious global economic crisis that has been seen for decades. Following the success of the Yves St. Laurent sale in Paris, all eyes were turned to Maastricht to see how TEFAF would coupe in these turbulent times. The result was what everybody hoped for but few dared to believe that the appetite for the best remains solid. Among the important sales were those of a Degas pastel, a life-size sculpture by Duane Hanson and a pair of Chinese ‘soldier’ vases.
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Saint Laurent Art Sale Brings In $264 Million
(NY Times) by Steven Erlanger
PARIS - Despite the global economic crisis, a lot of money seems to be left over. On Monday, the private collection of Yves Saint Laurent and his partner became the most expensive one ever sold at auction, bringing in more than $264 million on the first night alone.
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Degas sculpture sets new record
(Straits Times) by Reuters
LONDON - A RARE sculpture of a young ballet dancer by French impressionist Edgar Degas fetched a record £13.3 million ($28.9 million) on Tuesday, a record for the artist, auctioneer Sotheby's said.
'Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans' was one of only a handful of bronze casts by the artist remaining in private hands and was sold to a private Asian buyer.

It had been expected to sell for up to £12 million, although the final price did include a buyer's premium.

According to Sotheby's, the previous auction record for a Degas sculpture was US$12.3 million (S$ 18.5 million) set at Sotheby's, New York, in 1999.
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Christie's auction of Yves Saint Laurent's art collection in Paris is called
(Herald Tribune) by Nazanin Lankarani
PARIS - Less than four months after the death of the French couturier Yves Saint Laurent, his longtime partner and companion Pierre Bergé announced in September that he intended to sell the art collection that they had compiled over 50 years together. The three-day sale by Christie's France in collaboration with Pierre Bergé & Associés, Bergé's own auction house, will start here Feb. 23.
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Jeanne Lanvin's art collection to be auctioned
(The Herald Tribune) by Suzy Menkes
PARIS - So Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent are not the only famous fashion names behind an auction of fine art. A collection of Impressionist paintings, considered by experts to be the most important to be offered on the market in Paris for a long time, goes on sale at Christie's on Dec. 1. And it has a mysterious provenance: the hidden treasures gathered by Jeanne Lanvin, who founded her fashion house on children's wear in 1889, launched couture 20 years on, died in 1946 and left her legacy to her daughter, Marie-Blanche de Polignac.
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Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist Composition Sets Record at Sotheby's Sale
(artdaily.org)
NEW YORK - Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist Composition from 1916 sold for $60,002,500, not only a record for the artist, but a record for any Russian work of art ever sold at auction. Regarded as an icon of Russian art and a paradigmatic example of the 20th century avant-garde, the masterwork was executed in 1916, the same year that Malevich published his Suprematist Manifesto.
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