“Long winter for Old Masters” headlined the Financial Times’ Collecting section this past weekend, referring to the bad performances of London Old Master auctions the previous week. Although Georgina Adam is right in making this statement, what isn’t mentioned is the serious lack of good quality paintings on offer, the ridiculously high estimates given by auction house experts, and a headline lot failing to sell because of authenticity concerns.
“Long winter for Old Masters” headlined the Financial Times’ Collecting section this past weekend, referring to the bad performances of London Old Master auctions the previous week. Although Georgina Adam is right in making this statement, what isn’t mentioned is the serious lack of good quality paintings on offer, the ridiculously high estimates given by auction house experts, and a headline lot failing to sell because of authenticity concerns.
It is quite something to be able to celebrate five decades of work by a living artist, but that is exactly what the Lisson Gallery will be doing at Frieze Masters with a solo booth showcasing brightly colored, minimalist paintings of Carmen Herrera who is 100 years old this year.
London has two great Old Master exhibitions closing this week, the Moroni exhibition at the Royal Academy and the Rembrandt late works at the National Gallery. With Moroni we have the great portraitist of the Renaissance anticipating the realistic style of Caravaggio and later Manet; and Rembrandt, the undisputed star of the 17th century Dutch art scene.
This is not really a new story, but it feels fitting to start of a Monday, beginning of a week, a month and the summer. Mehdi Ghadyanloo has been decorating Tehran's high-rises and office buildings for eight years now, and reportedly painted over one hundred walls! His surrealist dream-like scenes beautifully complements the minimalistic architectural spaces that are often left blank and grey.
Look at this pair of Casta paintings (see below for info on Castas) that fetched $641,000 at Sotheby's Latin Art Modern & Contemporary Sale! They were estimated at $80,000-120,000, which was very modest but to reach this level is really remarkable.
Sotheby's secures an impressive group of works for their July Old Master Paintings sale in London; one that was put together by Barbara Piasecka Johnson (1937-2013) wife of the late John Seward Johnson, co-founder of the Johnson & Johnson firm.
Artangel has introduced "Van Gogh Walk," a free audio walk that re-imagines the emotional landscape of Vincent Van Gogh's London. This collaboration with CoolTan Arts is inspired by the writings of van Gogh and CoolTan artists, and has been developed to be listened to anywhere in the world, but the content was developed in the area surrounding 87 Hackford Road in London where Vincent van Gogh lived from 1873 to 1984.
Everyone in the Old Master market is talking about the astonishing price achieved for a Netherlandish School painting that was sold at Lempertz on 17th of May. This multi-figured large composition on canvas is thought to be a work by the great master Rembrandt himself,
