Episodes
Dane Jensen just opened his own art advisory firm in Los Angeles. He has worked in the art and auction industry as a curator, auction house specialist and art advisor. He became much more visible after engaging in an epic bidding war over Ernie Barnes’s The Sugar Shack II that sold to energy trader Bill Perkins for more than $15 million at Christie’s in May of 2022. In this podcast, Jensen talks about the role of an art advisor as well as what makes Los Angeles distinctive in terms of its...
Published 06/13/23
Published 06/13/23
In this podcast, David Galperin, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art for the Americas talks about the success of Justin Caguiat’s work in last month’s The Now sale, the continuing success of Jadé Fadojutimi’s work and how the cycle of discovery has accelerated. Why do young artists or historically overlooked artists launch so quickly into auction sales cycles? How does the discovery market function and what’s the interplay between galleries and auction houses.
Published 06/02/23
Natasha Degen is the chair of the graduate program in art market studies at FIT in New York. She has just published a book called Merchants of Style, Art and Fashion after Warhol. That subtitle doesn’t really capture the depth and nuance of her book. SHe has written an anatomy of the ways art and fashion have become intertwined in the present-day global economy. It’s not just that major fashion brands have latched onto artists as way to market their wares and their brands. Degen unpacks...
Published 05/26/23
The New York auctions begin this week with just over 2000 lots on offer. The combined low estimate is nearly $1.37 billion dollars. If we remove the Allen collection from last November’s sales, we’re still at about the same level in terms of the value of the low estimate. If that doesn’t surprise you, you’re lucky. That means you didn’t spend three months after November’s auctions waiting for a global recession to begin. During that period, little art traded hands. Now that the economic...
Published 05/09/23
When the $270 million dollar Gerald Fineberg collection was announced, Christie’s Sara Friedlander remarked that the Boston real estate developer, “bought art like a curator.” Citing his ability to go deep into key movements like the artists of Black Mountain College, the Ninth Street Women, Gutai, Pop, Minimalism, Arte Povera and the Pictures Generation, Friedlander also points out that Fineberg had important works by Gerhard Richter, Christopher Wool, Alice Neel, Man Ray, Beauford Delaney...
Published 05/05/23
S.I. Newhouse Jr. was a titan of the media business in the late 20th Century, presiding over Conde Nast but also owning with his brother Donald Advance Publication’s chain of newspapers and other cable television properties and networks. He was one of the preeminent collectors of Post-war and Contemporary art. Through the painter Alexander Liberman, who served as Conde Nast’s Editorial Director, he met the abstract expressionist Barnett Newman. Through Newman, he developed an interest in...
Published 05/02/23
The global auction and art fair calendar hardly seems like the fascinating subject that it really is. The art world still operates on a schedule largely established decades ago. The disruption of the global pandemic seemed to offer an opportunity to reshape those assumptions. Asia has become more important and art fairs are proliferating from Seoul to Los Angeles and Paris. Nevertheless, 2022 saw the old auction calendar re-emerge. Judging by the very strong numbers posted last year, sales...
Published 04/25/23
Cecily Brown has been a prominent painter for more than a quarter century. But starting in the last 5 years, her importance in the art market has grown substantially. With the opening of Death and the Maid at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, it seemed like a good time to discuss her market. The Met show is one of only a handful of museum shows that Brown has participated in including Boston’s MFA in 2006 and the Louisiana Museum in 2018. To get a better sense of how collectors view and value...
Published 04/13/23
CJ Hendry is an artist “of sorts,” she says. She’s an Instagram phenom, an entrepreneur, a copyright provocateur and an impresario. Last year she converted a church in London into an immersive experience that involved a never-ending indoor “snowstorm.” This month in Brooklyn, she has created a massive indoor playground for children and adults for a show called Plaid. From her renovated Brooklyn townhouse just featured in Architectural Digest to acting as her own gallery to a documentary...
Published 04/06/23
Editions, or the sales of prints and multiple works, is an auction category that is rarely discussed. For many artists, editioned work is a significant part of their practice. Over the last several years, there has been an explosion in interest and auction activity. In 2021, Phillips saw a record-breaking year for its Editions sales. Since then, auction volume has risen another 30% to a total of $40 million in sales in 2022. Phillips editions department was founded in 2008. Since that time,...
Published 03/29/23
Innovation is so important to Kenneth Noland's practice, says Pace Gallery's Alex Brown in this podcast. This month, Pace brings a show of Noland's Stripes, Plaids and Shapes to Chelsea after a successful run in their London gallery. To get a better understanding of Noland's career, we spoke with Bill Noland, the artist's son; then Alex Brown and the Noland estate's long-term advisor, Douglas Baxter, help us understand the market for the artist.
Published 03/24/23
Sara Friedlander, a deputy Chairman at Christie’s who styles herself and “art merchant,” joins LiveArt’s George O’Dell to discuss the first New York sales of 2023. The auction calendar is anchored by the May & November sales in New York but the rest of the year is a free-for-all of sales. On a year-over-year basis, the New York Contemporary art sales were up in dollar volume due to presence of two single-owner sales but down only slightly on a like-for-like basis. Sara points out that...
Published 03/17/23
Philip Guston Now is the biggest international retrospective of the artist's work in a generation. It's debut at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC this month comes shortly after the announcement of a major gift of the artist's work to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Both the retrospective and the donation contain a considerable number of works from the artist's daughter, Musa Mayer. In this podcast, we speak to the National Gallery's Harry Cooper, a curator of the show,...
Published 03/10/23
The art market has been holding its breath for nearly three months. How will the global economy affect the art market in 2023? With the important London auctions now on view, we speak to Sotheby's Helena Newman, Phillips's Cheyenne Westphal, Christie's Keith Gill, Olivier Camu and Tessa Lord, as well as Sotheby's James Sevier to learn more about the upcoming lots including a $45 million Kandinsky on offer through restitution, a several Gerhard Richter abstract paintings at different price...
Published 02/24/23
Noah Horowitz returned to Art Basel as CEO after a year and a half away at Sotheby's. In his new role, which is also a new role for the company, Horowitz is rebuilding the Art Basel team around a strategy for a bigger art fair business with more galleries, more fairs and more opportunities. In this podcast, he talks about the importance of each fair in the Art Basel constellation meeting the needs of galleries, collectors and the cities that surround them. But he also looks toward the future...
Published 02/20/23
Acquavella Gallery has represented the artist Wayne Thiebaud since 2011. The artist, who died on Christmas day in 2021 at the age of 101 was serious about his art, teaching and tennis. How serious was he about his art? Thiebaud worked on one painting for 32 years. Now the Fondation Beyeler has a show of 65 works by Thiebaud that will introduce the breadth of his work to a global audience. In this podcast, Eleanor Acquavella explains the unique factors that have led to a dramatic rise in value...
Published 02/07/23
One of the clear trends visible in last year’s auction data is a renewed interest in abstract painting. Bidders are pursuing a range of overlooked artists from the 1940s and 1950s. Into that trend, David Zwirner Gallery has opened a new show, Roma New York, 1953-64. The exhibition more than 50 works by 23 different artists highlights the connection between some of the giants of mid-century art like Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Franz Kline and Cy Twombly , as well as lesser known...
Published 01/26/23
Who are the hottest artists at auction in 2022 whose markets are likely to continue to rise in 2023? George O'Dell talks us through the trends that emerged from looking at more than 200 artists whose overall auction prices were well above the estimates. We identified six main trends: 1) strong demand for artists who are women; 2) revivals of forgotten or undervalued artists; 3) big names gaining value; 4) naive painters; 5) surrealists and their contemporary admirers; as well as demand for 6)...
Published 01/17/23
Laura Paulson is Principal at Gagosian Art Advisory where she has recently advised on the sale of David M. Solinger's collection which featured the much-talked about Willem de Kooning "Collage." Earlier this year, Paulson also advised on the sale of the Macklowe collection which galvanized the market and was briefly the most valuable single-owner collection ever sold. In this podcast, Paulson discusses the strategy behind the Solinger heirs decision not to take a global guarantee or...
Published 12/23/22
Lucius Elliott and Kelsey Leonard go through some of the sales trends in the November auctions with LiveArt's George O'Dell. David Hockney, new market share levels for female artists, Abstract and Color Field painters, Christina Quarles, Lauren Quin, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Louise Nevelson, Andy Warhol and Salmon Toor are the artists and markets covered in this conversation.
Published 11/25/22
Lock Kresler is a Senior Director at Helly Nahmad Gallery in London. He's deeply involved in the private market but also spent a decade working at Christie's. In this conversation with George O'Dell of LiveArt, Kresler comments on the success of Paul G. Allen Collection, the uneven nature of this season's sales and how that will influence both the public and private markets going forward.
Published 11/22/22
The Day sales are where the art market does its business. These marathon marts are where dealers, art advisors and the occasional brave collector chase the works they believe in. Collecting trends, price movements and discoveries all take place in the day sales. LiveArt's George O'Dell, Arina Novak and Sophie Coco discuss a broad range of artists on offer in the Day sales from a wide array of Abstract Expressionists to recent market mainstays like Scott Kahn. Join us for a preview of what to...
Published 11/11/22
In 2022, artist Lynne Drexler's work exploded on the art market. An artist who had briefly shown in the early 1960s in New York, she continued to work on a remote island in Maine until her death in 1999. Two decades later, she became the artist of the moment. Sukanya Rajaratnam and Christine Berry have collaborated on a dual-gallery show of Drexler's work from her first decade, 1959-1969, The shows at Berry Campbell and Mnuchin have drawn in new audiences and further burnished Drexler's...
Published 11/08/22
LiveArt's sales team discussed the Paul Allen collection at Christie's, Alex Katz's market in light of his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, and the new record prices set for Alighiero Boetti's work in Paris and the expectation of an even bigger record in New York this month.
Published 11/04/22