The Secrets of the Art Industry

The Secrets of the Art Industry

The common understanding is that museums are a place of cultural and historical importance where philanthropic ideas of curatorship, education, and conservation are preserved and encouraged for the benefits of greater public. But increasingly, museums are also being used as a tool to serve the agenda of their super-wealthy patrons, their board members. It would […]

Lee Krasner the Painter: Bright Star in Her Own Right

Lee Krasner the Painter: Bright Star in Her Own Right

Thirty-three years after her passing, abstract expressionist Lee Krasner set a record for her legacy when her painting Shattered Light (1954) sold at Christie’s New York for $5.5 million. And just two years later in 2019, her painting The Eye is the First Circle (1960) shattered that record and doubled it when the painting sold for $11.65 million at […]

Art and Money Series Part. 2: Why It’s Complicated

“I always loved swimming pools, all the wiggly lines they make,” said David Hockney, the author of a painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” that set the record for a work by a living artist sold atauction. “If you photograph them (swimming pools), it freezes them whereas if you use paint, you […]

Andy Warhol’s Legacy and the Business of Art

November 12 – The Whitney Museum of American art opened the most significant Andy Warhol retrospective in almost 30 years. A fantastic opportunity for the new generation of Americans to get to know the work of one of the most iconic artists of the 20th century… well, at least for those who love art. “From […]

Salvator Mundi: The Complex History Behind the Last Leonardo da Vinci

The Salvator Mundi (“Saviour of the World”) painting shows Christ with a haunting expression on his face. He is holding a glass orb in one hand while his other hand is raised with fingers crossed, as though blessing whoever was looking upon it. But before Salvator Mundi, the 500- year-old painting of Christ by Leonardo […]

Swiss Freeports for Art Treasures & Tax Evasion

In 2015, in the wake of the news on the revised law on freeports, the global art market was shaken by the chronicles of Geneva’s bonded warehouses, a storage facility for the super-rich collectors at the center of tax evasion controversy. Thierry Ehrmann, the president of art market information specialist Artprice, said that Geneva’s freeport […]

Old Masters: Most Undervalued Art

There was a time when artwork by the Old Masters – those artists who were academically trained and worked in Europe before about 1800 – were the most coveted by collectors. However, with the explosive rise and popularity of Contemporary Art, can the Old Masters remain relevant in the art world? According to the 2016 […]

Auction to Private Art Sales: Art Market Power Shift

There has been a noteworthy power shift in high-end art market eco-system in the recent time. Auction house that has been an unshakable power base to headline-making top-end of the art market throughout the post-war era to the recent decades, no longer seems to be a flag bearer of the highly lucrative secondary art market. […]

Mona Lisa Curse?

prado-mona-lisa_louvre-mona-lisa

“Art should make us feel more clearly and more intelligently. It should give us coherent sensations, which otherwise we would not have had. That is what brought me to this city. That is what market culture is killing.” – Robert Hughes The Mona Lisa Curse is a Grierson award-winning polemic documentary film by art critic […]

Why Is Art So Expensive?

What would you do with $500 million? (We’re talking record-setting-Powerball money here.) Perhaps, pay off your student loans, buy a home, and take a really fabulous vacation—but that’s peanuts to $500 million. For that kind of money, you could buy this 28-bedroom medieval castle outside of Paris—10 times over. You could buy a hundred Koenigsegg […]