Final Christie's Report: Detroit Art Worth Up to $867-Million

DETROIT FREE PRESS
By Randy Kennedy

Detail from Michelangelo drawing for design of Sistine Chapel, estimates auction value is $12 million to $20 million

MICHIGAN---The price tags are on the paintings. Detroit’s emergency manager released a report from Christie’s auction house on Thursday detailing market estimates for some of the greatest masterpieces in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Art. The estimates – which Christie’s said would total between $454 million and $867 million – cover about 2,800 pieces, or less than 5 percent of the institute’s entire collection because Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn D. Orr, asked Christie’s to focus only on pieces that had been bought with city funds over the years, not ones than had been donated or bought with other funds. The museum and its supporters have vowed to go to court to try to stop any sale. [link]

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Foundation's Secret Bids Guide Hopi Indians’ Spirits Home

THE NEW YORKBy Tom Mashberg

Alain Leroy, owner of an auction company in Paris, surrounded by sacred Hopi spirit masks.

CALIFORNIA---The foundation had never done something like this before — a repatriation effort — and the logistics were tricky, to say the least. More than 100 American Indian artifacts were about to go on sale at the Drouot auction house, including 24 pieces, resembling masks, that are held sacred by the Hopi of Arizona. Now the Annenberg Foundation decided to get involved from its offices in Los Angeles. It hoped to buy all of the Hopi artifacts, plus three more sought by the San Carlos Apaches, at the Dec. 9 sale and return them to the tribes. To prevent prices from rising, the foundation kept its plan a secret, even from the Hopis, in part to protect the tribe from potential disappointment. [link]

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U.S. Foundation Buys Sacred Native American Masks to Return to the Hopi Nation

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
By David Ng

A Hopi mask that was being sold by the Paris auction house Eve as part of a sale of Native American objects on Monday.

CALIFORNIA---The Annenberg Foundation has revealed that it was an anonymous bidder that paid $530,000 for 24 Native American artifacts that were being sold at a controversial auction in Paris earlier this week. The Los Angeles-based charitable organization headed by Wallis Annenberg said that it will return the artifacts to the Hopi Nation and to the San Carlos Apache tribe. Monday's controversial sale took place several months after another French auction house sold 70 Native American artifacts despite international criticism. Neret-Minet Tessier & Sarrou sold the objects at an April auction for a total of €930,000 ($675,479). [link]

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More Hopi Masks to be Auctioned in France, Despite United States Government Efforts

ARTDAILY

FRANCE---A Paris auction of sacred objects from the Hopi and San Carlos Apache Native American tribes will "probably" go ahead despite US objections, the auctioneer said on Sunday. A number of ceremonial masks and head-dresses are due to go under the hammer at the EVE auction house on Monday after the failure of a legal challenge by advocacy group Survival International. The battle is a rerun of one earlier this year in which French firm Neret-Minet ignored international appeals to halt the sale of some 70 masks that eventually fetched around 930,000 euros ($1.3 million). [link]

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Common Sense: Record Prices Mask a Tepid Art Market

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By James B. Stewart

Sanford Robinson Gifford’s "Sunday Morning in the Camp of the Seventh Regiment," which hung in the Oval Office for over 20 years, didn’t sell at this week’s auction at Christie’s.

NEW YORK---Despite the headlines and the hyperbolic enthusiasm of many auctioneers and dealers, the broad market for fine art is in the doldrums, according to experts who track sales data. Many works are selling near or below their low estimates or failing to sell at all. As measured by the Mei Moses World All Art Index, a widely cited benchmark, the market for fine art declined 3.3 percent in 2012, and gained 2.2 percent through November, even with the recent record-setting sales. Strip out traditional Chinese art, the value of which has been surging for years thanks to the interest of wealthy Chinese buyers, and the performance would be much worse. [link]

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Religious Rockwell Art Sells for Record $46M at NY Auction

ASSOCIATED PRESS 
By Ula Ilnytzky

"Saying Grace" (1951) by Norman Rockwell

NEW YORK---A Norman Rockwell painting titled "Saying Grace" sold at an auction on Wednesday for $46 million, a record for the Saturday Evening Post illustrator and for any work sold at an American art auction, Sotheby's said. Two people on the telephone bid against each other for nine minutes before the hammer came down, the auction house said. The buyer's identity wasn't disclosed. The painting had a pre-sale estimate of $15 million to $20 million. The idea for the illustration came from a reader who saw a Mennonite family praying in a restaurant. Rockwell's son Jarvis Rockwell was among the models he used for it. [link]

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Belafonte vs. King Family in Federal Court

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By James C. McKinley, Jr.

NEW YORK---Harry Belafonte is 86, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the three surviving children of one of his closest friends: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At issue are three documents that used to be in Mr. Belafonte’s collection of memorabilia, along with other photos and letters on the walls of his apartment, chronicling his long friendship with Dr. King. A spokeswoman for Bernice King, Bunnie Jackson-Ransom, said Ms. King had no comment on Mr. Belafonte’s suit. The King family has a history of suing to protect its right to Dr. King’s works and images, and they have also aggressively sought to recover Dr. King’s documents. In December 2008, Mr. Belafonte tried to sell the documents at Sotheby’s auction house to raise money, he says, for Barrios Unidos, a charity that works with street gangs. Before the sale could go forward, however, Dr. King’s estate challenged Mr. Belafonte’s ownership of the papers. [link]

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Tsarevich's Icon Offered for Sale, as Part of London's Russian Art Week

ALPHA OMEGA ARTS

St Aleksei, Metropolitan of Moscow, Russia, Mount Athos.
Presented to Tsarevich Aleksei and dated 1904 on the reverse, 35.8 x 31 cm.

UNITED KINGDOM---Sixty Russian and Greek Icons will be staged as part of Russian Art Week, a bi-annual event launched in 2012 by the online arts magazine Russian Art and Culture, according to Artdaily. The exhibition, organized by Jan Morsink Ikonen of Amsterdam, an international specialist in the field, will be mounted at the Willow Gallery in London, from November 23-29 November 2013, will offer a rare overview of icons from the orthodox world dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

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A Shakyamuni Buddha sells for $30 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong

ART MEDIA AGENCY

Bronze figure of a seated Shakyamuni Buddha, Mark and Period of Yongle

HONG KONG---The “Fine Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art” sale, which took place at Sotheby’s Hong Kong on 8 October, saw the sale of a bronze Shakyamuni Buddha dating from the Ming dynasty. The piece sold for $30 million, establishing a new record sale for a Chinese sculpture. The Buddha, from the 15th century Yongle period, was purchased by Chinese collector Zheng Huaxing, a Tibetan Buddhist with a strong interest in Buddhist sculptures. He attended the auction in person, commenting that “I would have paid any price for this sculpture. I am glad that it can finally be returned to its rightful place in China.” The statue, measuring 54.5 cm in height, bears the inscription “Da ming Yongle nianshi (bestowed in the Yongle era of the great Ming)”. [link]

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Art Entreprenuers in India Use Auctions to Bring Culture Home

THE HINDU
By DIVYA KUMAR

One of the works on auction

INDIA---An Yahh, the New Delhi-based fine art brand, is back in Chennai in time for the festive season. This time around, they aren’t just bringing you an immense array of affordable art; they will also be doing an art auction for charity, and providing you with some artsy gift options. “We have tied up with the Multiple Scleroses Society of India and Save Trust India for the auction,” says Manpreet Chadha, director of An Yahh. “The works will be auctioned before a select by-invitation-only audience of art collectors, entrepreneurs and industrialists.” The show, titled ‘Artscapes IV’ will feature 500 paintings by 35 senior and up-and-coming artists from around the country, with prices ranging from Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 2.5 lakhs. [link]

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Islamic Art Week Comes to London, Including Carpets

JOZAN | ORIENTAL RUG NEWS

Lot 190 at Bonhams ‘Islamic and Indian Arts’. A Feraghan Sarouk carpet, West Persia, circa 1890, 428cm x 326cm. Estimate: £22,000 – 28,000

UNITED KINGDOM---This year’s ‘Islamic Art Week’ in London 7-11 October 2013 includes several auctions at Christie’s ‘The Saeed Motamed Collection Part II’ 7 October at 10.00 am, ‘Oriental Rugs & Carpets‘ 8 October at 11.00 am, ‘Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds’ 10 October at 11.00 am and ‘Arts & Textiles of the Islamic & Indian Worlds’ 11. October at 10.00 am. Bonhams ‘Islamic and Indian Art’ will take place 8 October starting at 10.30 am and Sothebys will hold their ‘Arts of the Islamic World’ 9 October at 10.00 am and ‘Art of Imperial India’ 9 October at 2.00 pm. [link]

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Art Market Shuts Out All but the Super Rich

INTERNATIONAL TIMES HERALD
By Souren Melikian

El Greco’s ‘‘Christ on the Cross’’

UNITED KINGDOM---The massive price rise of art over the past five decades, whipped up by professionals to the cheers of the media chorus, has had an underreported consequence. Buying art has become the privilege of the very rich. Auctions became events and buying art a fashionable game played by ever-growing numbers. Countries previously barely involved in buying art in the Western market joined the fun. This happened at a Sotheby’s London sale of Old Masters on July 3. El Greco’s “Saint Dominic in Prayer,” expected to sell between £3 million and £5 million plus the sale charge, cost £9.15 million. Within 30 minutes, a second El Greco, “Christ on the Cross,” also expected to sell within those limits, did not even make it to the lower end of the estimate when it realized £3.44 million. Amusingly, “Christ on the Cross,” which made slightly more than one third of the price paid for the first El Greco, is held by some to be the greater picture. [link]

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M. F. Husain’s ‘Bhopal’ to Go Under the Auctioneer's Hammer

THE HINDU
By Parvathi Menon

"Bhopal" by Maqbool Fida Husain

UNITED KINGDOM--- ‘Bhopal’, Maqbool Fida Husain’s anguished representation of the terrible consequences of industrial negligence in Bhopal, is to go under the hammer on October 8 at the Bonhams Auction House in London. “Just as Pablo Picasso’s passion and outrage towards the Spanish Civil War had inspired him to create ‘Guernica’ (1937), ‘Bhopal’ was the result of Husain’s horror at the long-lasting effects of the leak,” the press release said, though attributing the work’s energy to Husain’s own genius that was moulded by life around him. The Bhopal disaster occurred on December 3, 1984 when a poison gas leak from a Union Carbide factory killed around 2000 people. The oil on canvas has been valued at £200,000-300,000. [link]

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Travel Through Time: Asian Art Featured on The Curator’s Eye

ARTFIX DAILY

Baphuon-style Khmer Head

NEW YORK---As Asian art markets continue their impressive showing at sales and shows around the world, The Curator’s Eye hosts a chronological tour of the exceptional items of Asian origin currently on display on the continuous online exhibition. The Curator’s Eye offers a varied selection of objects made in locations from China to Cambodia, and made from as early as 550 A.D. up to contemporary times. [link]

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Chinese Collectors 'Price Out' Western Bidders At Asian Art Auctions

JING DAILY

A bronze figure of Parvati that sold for $963,750 at Christie’s. 

NEW YORK---Asian art has been massively popular in this week’s New York auctions, with prices being driven well above even the high estimates for everything from ancient bronzes to Buddhist figures. Many of the antiques may be coming from Western collections, but collectors from China are making the highest bids this time around. The rooms of the Asian art auctions held this week by top auction houses Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Bonhams were filled to capacity, with mainly Chinese buyers in attendance. [link]

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'The Last Supper' Heads to Auction, and the Chinese Artwork May Fetch $10 Million

THE HUFFINGTON POST

"The Last Supper" by Zeng Fanzhi

CHINA---"The Last Supper" is heading to auction. But if you're expecting Jesus, Judas and the gang, you've got another thing coming. This unorthodox -- and very pricey -- take on Da Vinci's classic was rendered over 500 years later and quite a ways across the globe. "The Last Supper" we're admiring is by Chinese contemporary artist Zeng Fanzhi, an art icon known for documenting the psychological toll that his country's economic reform has had on its citizens. Made in 2001, the painting was part of Fanzhi's "Mask" series, which examines selfhood and deception in modern China. This influential work is heading to the auction block as part of Sotheby’s Hong Kong 40th Anniversary Evening Sale, where it's expected to sell for $10 million dollars. [link]

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Legal Tussle Over Hindu Statue Turns Nasty

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Tom Mashberg

Duryodhana, the statue.

NEW YORK---The fight between Sotheby’s and federal lawyers over the fate of an ancient sandstone statue that Cambodia wants returned took a bitter turn in court on Thursday after each side filed papers accusing the other of acting unethically. The tensions in court on Thursday underscored the stakes in the case, in which the United States, acting on Cambodia’s behalf, has accused one of the world’s leading auction houses of attempting to sell a 10th-century Khmer empire statue valued at $3 million despite what the government views as evidence that it was looted. The statue portrays a hulking Hindu warrior named Duryodhana. Cambodia laid claim to it after matching it to its severed feet, which were found in the Koh Ker temple complex. The statue, which had been sent to New York by its Belgian owner for auction, was removed from sale in March 2011, when Cambodia declared it to be a looted artifact. [link]

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Exhibition, Sale of Buddhist Art in New York

BUSINESS STANDARD

A Grey Schist Figure of a Standing Bodhisattva

NEW YORK---Buddhism, its philosophical concepts, and the manner it influenced various cultures across countries has been documented through art. Now, global auctioneer Sotheby's traces the historical development and transformation of Buddhist art as it travelled throughout Asia from the 2nd century through the 21st century. Comprising paintings and sculptures from ancient regions of Gandhara, Nepal, Tibet, Korea, China and Japan, the exhibition "Footsteps of the Buddha: Masterworks from across the Buddhist World", is being shown in New York from September 3 to September 23. A third or fourth century grey schist standing Bodhisattva in the Gandharan style of sculpture has been pegged as a major highlight of the exhibition. [link]

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