De inkomsten van het geplaagde internationale veilinghuis Sotheby’s dalen onverminderd, blijkt uit nieuwe cijfers van het bedrijf. Voor het tweede kwartaal rekent Sotheby’s op een val van 87 procent in New York. De financieel directeur van Sotheby’s, William Sheridan, zei echter te verwachten dat de internationale kunstmarkt zich nu weldra zal stabiliseren. ‘We geloven dat de bodem is bereikt.’
Archief voor de maand augustus, 2009
Sotheby’s: bodem in zicht na neergang – Volkskrant
6 augustus 2009Jeff Koons on his Serpentine show, his inspirations and how his studio system works – The Art Newspaper
5 augustus 2009Touring Jeff Koons’s gigantic Chelsea studio in anticipation of his big summer solo show at the Serpentine in London (until 13 September) is rich in discombobulation. This is partly because the place is just so large: endless cavernous rooms, one after the other, teeming with workers and assistants, more than 120 of them, all hard at work in intense silence producing paintings and sculptures, maquettes and studies, a high-tech laboratory somewhere between a James Bond set and a Warholian super-studio. But it is also because Koons himself, always unfailingly polite, gracious and soft-spoken, is a genius not so much at self-promotion as self-deflection, seemingly ignoring some questions only to later reveal that he has been pondering them secretly. Koons likes to concentrate on technical descriptions of the work at hand mixed with sudden bursts of cryptic oratory, a sort of self-help conceptualism minted from Andy’s deadpan American optimism. Just as Koons’s work remains ever-ambiguous about just how dumb or smart it really is, likewise the man can seem like a New Age huckster repeating banal platitudes only to surprise one with the sheer smartness of some observation. If Koons and his steady ascension to wealth and fame might seem reminiscent of “Chance the Gardener”, as played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 film Being There, a simpleton whose simplicity is confused with sagacity, there is no denying his current status. Indeed it is when Koons runs one briefly through a selection of his art collection on his computer—from the Poussin on loan to the Metropolitan which he keeps as his screensaver, to the Manet, the Courbet, the medieval wooden sculpture, the Pharaonic head, the Magritte and Dalí paintings, the major Picassos—that one realises not only just how rich he must be but how deep his interest is in art history and how obsessively he can talk about one image in intricate detail. This large and impressive collection may be cunningly intended to make one see his own work in the very grandest historical context, to make even the toughest sceptic grant him the benefit of the doubt. And it works.
Een door popkunstenaar Andy Warhol gemaakt portret van de overleden King of Pop Michael Jackson gaat binnenkort onder de hamer. De veiling vindt plaats in New York, meldde de website van de BBC zondag.
Topfotografe Leibovitz belaagd door bank – Volkskrant
1 augustus 2009Tegen de beroemde Amerikaanse fotografe Annie Leibovitz is een rechtszaak aangespannen door de financieringsmaatschappij Art Capital, bij wie zij 24 miljoen dollar heeft geleend met als onderpand haar huizen in New York en de rechten op haar foto’s. De bank eist toegang tot haar woningen en haar foto-archief en dreigt met verkoop van de onderpanden omdat de fotografe niet aan haar betalingsverplichtingen voldoet.
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