
Want to buy a Picasso? Just swipe right on the Tinder for art
As collectors and aficionados perused the offerings at Frieze New York last week, they formed a who's who of the art world. Notably absent, however, was one of America's most successful private auctioneers. 'I'm not in the nitty-gritty — I don't go to the shows, I don't know who is hot. I'm not in the conversation,' Loïc Gouzer says. 'There's a lot of chat and I'm just not into it.'
Gouzer, the 44-year-old Swiss-born former head of contemporary art at Christie's and the man responsible for the sale of the most expensive artwork in history — Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million in 2017 — was too busy preparing the lot of a late-era Picasso for a select group of

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BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
Flog It! antiques expert Michael Baggott's silver set to be sold
A collection of York silver belonging to late Flog It! antiques expert Michael Baggott could be the "most comprehensive" set to be sold publicly, an auctioneer has who worked on the BBC series, died earlier this year aged 51, after a heart antiques collection, expected to sell for more than £200,000, includes an extensive selection of silver assessed by metal testers in York."It includes over 550 pieces from the late 17th Century to the closure of the [York] assay office in 1858," Rupert Slingsby, silver specialist at Woolley and Wallis auctioneers, said. "The Baggott collection is probably the most comprehensive collection of silver assayed in York ever to come on to the open market," Mr Slingsby also includes items assessed in assay offices in Liverpool, Chester Dundee, Newcastle, Bristol, Exeter and Aberdeen. According to the auction house, highlights of the collection include a rare George II provincial mug, a Victorian novelty Jester pepper pot and a George IV gilt sideboard was born in Birmingham and his interest in antiques began at an early worked at Christie's auction house and was head of silver at Sotheby's Billingshurst, before becoming a private consultant, known as an authority on joined BBC daytime show Flog It! in the early 2000s, and valued various silver programme showed members of the public having their antique items appraised by experts before being given the option to sell them at auction, but it was axed amidst BBC One daytime schedule changes in this year, the head of BBC daytime and early peak commissioning, Rob Unsworth, described Baggott as one of the show's "most memorable characters".He was an "expert in all manner of collectables but in particular with unrivalled knowledge and enthusiasm for antique spoons and silver", Mr Unsworth added. Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.


BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Birmingham hosts New York graffiti train photography exhibition
Respected New York photographer Henry Chalfant is clearly delighted by how Birmingham is showcasing his work in a new flown into England's second city to give his seal of approval to The Epic Story of Graffiti."This is amazing, this is really spectacularly beautiful and so impressive and grand. And for me to see that entrance, coming across the plaza, was like mind-blowing."The 85-year-old was in New York at the time the city gave birth to hip-hop, and travelled around the city in the 1970s and 1980s documenting young men creating an art movement with graffiti on the New York subway. "I think we've proved now that this is an artform that has exploded beyond the kind of boundaries that people try to confine this artform with," said The Epic Art of Graffiti curator Mohammed Ali from Birmingham-based Soul City Arts. "I saw Henry many years ago, over 10 years ago in New York and I said: 'We've got to bring this to Birmingham' where I was born and raised, and I feel really, really blessed and privileged that Henry has trusted me with these pictures." Chalfant, originally from Pennsylvania, moved to New York in the early 1970s at a time when the city had a fearful reputation. "It was when New York was at the bottom, already going down the drain," he said."The middle class was fleeing, the Bronx was burning, and East New York was burning. It was terrible and pretty scary to go there."But it never ceased to blow my mind living in New York. There was already graffiti on the trains and I wanted to take pictures to show my friends outside of the city to say 'see it's not so bad, it's actually exciting'."Chalfant started photographing the train painters in 1977 and spent the next eight years capturing their work, once he had convinced them "I wasn't an undercover cop".He added: "The graffiti movement has been culture-changing and I was there at the start and I feel very happy and lucky and proud of that." The exhibition has been launched to coincide with the B-SIDE Hip-Hop Festival, which takes place this weekend, and is celebrating its 10th three-day festival takes place at Birmingham Hippodrome, Southside and Bullring. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.


The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Stick: Owen Wilson's charmingly funny golf drama is as feelgood as Ted Lasso
Golf is – apologies to fans, the ground is gonna get a little rough – inert material for TV and film. It's not explosively combative like say football, either American or actual. In golf, players interact with the environment, not each other. There is no time pressure. Physical adjustments are minute, the airborne ball impossible to see. For casual spectators, the experience mostly amounts to watching a middle-aged man shuffle above a tiny ball, like an emperor penguin sitting on an egg. The sound of even a world-beating putt is a soft plop. However, a lack of basic knowledge brought me late to Friday Night Lights, a show that became one of my favourites. I'd like to avoid making that mistake with Stick (Apple TV+, from Wednesday 4 June), so let's see. Wisely, the show isn't aiming at FNL's grit and spunk, blue-collar catharsis. Stick is funny, in a gentle, humane way. Clearly, Apple+ is attempting to hit its own marker again, the one with 'Ted Lasso' written on it in gold. Owen Wilson plays Pryce Cahill, a former pro golfer reduced to coaching retirees and pulling short cons in bars. When he catches Latino teenager Santi (Peter Dager) sneaking on to the range where he works, to ragefully hammer balls, Pryce realises the boy is a prodigy and offers to coach him. Together with his old caddy and the boy's mother, they road trip between tournaments in search of fortune. But do you know what? I think they might find something deeper. Stick's credit sequence features a ukulele playing over a series of watercolours, so you know this isn't The Wire. It's feelgood! Expect light bickering and dissolvable disputes! Frequent sporting metaphors for emotional growth! Like Community – a comedy that offered a self-aware take on the inspirational speech – Stick is aware that if you stretch such metaphors too far, they snap back into parody. 'I used to think she liked me, but she loves you,' whispers Pryce to his protege, very much in the vein of 'playing golf is like making love to a beautiful woman'. The show just about manages to have its cake and eat it. You don't need Google to enjoy Stick. I let references to knockdowns, casting and holding the finish wash over me like suds in the bath. Dager looks good swinging a stick, while Mariana Treviño, as his forthright mom Elena, improves every scene she's in. Marc Maron is winning as Mitts, a curmudgeonly caddy with a hidden heart – a trope he's made his own. The show finds its groove with the addition of Lilli Kay as Zero, a defiant club worker and love interest. With a she/they character on board, the show gets to prod at generational tension, and the problematic imbalance of mentor relationships. When Pryce admonishes Santi for his discipline, Zero warns him to stop 'prescribing late stage capitalist ideology to your great brown cash cow'. Elena advises Pryce to back off, without backing down. 'They smell fear, the gen Z-ers.' Driving it all, like a high MOI titanium club, is Owen Wilson. Something about Wilson's hair invariably makes me wonder when a weed pipe is going to appear on screen (the answer is seven minutes into the first episode). It's easy to forget he's also an Oscar-nominated writer and subtle actor. With his goofy voice, broken nose and wounded smile, he excels at playing characters who are both boyish and washed-up, full of good cheer dented by time. He's perfect as the broke, dragging-his-heels-through-a-divorce Pryce, whose Ryder Cup career ended with a televised mental breakdown on a fairway years ago. Aficionados will enjoy debating the finer points of Santi's swing. The directors get round the invisible ball problem with soaring drones and POV shots, to inject visual flair and kineticism. The show promises cameos from real-life pros including Max Homa, Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa for a frisson of authenticity. With Happy Gilmore 2 coming to Netflix in July, golf fans are spoilt for choice. Which doesn't leave the rest of us out in the cold. Sport in dramas is a vehicle for storytelling, rather than being the story itself. Another tricky mentor relationship is fathering, the show's real theme. A few episodes in, I care enough to see how it plays out. Can Stick stick the landing? I wouldn't bet against it.