Latest news with #ARTnews
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Amid Political and Financial Turmoil, Frieze New York Kicks Off With With Robust Sales
After days of simultaneously damp and drizzly weather, Frieze New York opened its doors to a warm, bright, and energetic morning on Wednesday. Compared to last year's spring art week, this year's is especially jam-packed, with Frieze and TEFAF's US edition separated by just 24 hours instead of a week. And so, the sales floor was animated throughout the VIP day. On top of the bevy of fairs, there are a multitude of gallery shows, museum exhibitions, and art fairs opening or already on view this week. In a market where collectors are choosing to take things more slowly when it comes to spending their time—and their money—than in previous years, that is seemingly a good thing. More from Robb Report A 1930s San Francisco Home Lists for $19.5 Million With a Garden Apartment Bill Gates Will Give Away $200 Billion and Shutter His Foundation by 2045 Koenigsegg's Hypercar Just Set Two More Bonkers Speed Records But there's more in the air than talk about the market. The aisles buzzed with conversations of the financial and political state of the world. 'This week will set the tone for how the global market will behave in the coming months,' London-based adviser Arianne Piper told ARTnews. 'The unfortunate truth is that the political situation has disrupted that. It's not so much the current economic situation but the fear of the economic consequences of that situation.' That said, Piper added that the people who made it out to the Frieze on Wednesday are buying. 'It's not about the money. It's about the bandwidth.' Notably, Gagosian had a solo presentation of three sculptures by Jeff Koons, the artist's first collaboration since departing the mega-gallery's roster in 2021. This trio 'Hulk' works—Hulk (Organ), Hulk (Tubas), and Hulk (Dragon and Turtle)—came from Koons's personal collection and were installed in front of a custom vinyl backdrop, derived from his 2007 painting Triple Hulk Elvis III. 'The fair is off to a great start and the response to our booth has been phenomenal,' Gagosian senior director Millicent Wilner said in a statement, which noted that Hulk (Tubas) had already sold. When ARTnews asked about the price of each of the three mixed-media works, the gallery declined to comment, but well-places sources tell ARTnews that Hulk (Tubas) sold for $3 million. Thaddaeus Ropac, which currently has spaces in three European cities and Seoul, reported a strong start at Frieze New York, with a slower but more deliberate pace of sales despite strong attendance. 'People are taking their time and being really considered,' he said, adding that the gallery remains 'cautiously optimistic' about overall results. Early sales include Liza Lou's Zeugma (2024) for $225,000; Joan Snyder's mixed-media Float (2015) for $210,000; David Salle's Bow Tie (2024) for $130,000 to a US-based collector; a Martha Jungwirth painting for €85,000; and a Robert Longo drawing for $65,000. Two small works by Megan Rooney sold for £18,000 each, with a larger painting, priced at £75,000, currently on hold. Georg Baselitz's Motto: sexuelle Niete sagt Heidegger sagt Celan is also on reserve for €1 million. Pace Gallery kept things sharp at Frieze New York with a two-artist presentation pairing Adam Pendleton and Lynda Benglis. Pendleton himself curated the booth, which features four 'Black Dada' paintings from 2024 and two 'Movement' paintings from 2025. For her part, Benglis has six bronze sculptures, completed between 2021 and 2024, that play off Pendleton's canvases, showcasing their different approaches to abstraction. All six of Pendleton's paintings found buyers within the first couple of hours of the fair for between $165,000 and $425,000, while multiple works by Benglis sold for between $275,000 and $300,000. New York dealer Andrew Kreps described the first day of the fair as going 'really well' with great energy for Jes Fan's 2023 sculpture Cross Section (Right Leg Muscle II) selling for $26,000; Harold Stevenson's 1967 painting Untitled (Hand sign language) going for $70,000; and Hadi Falapishi's Professional Painter in a Dream (2025) for $25,000. The gallery also sold four editions of Roe Ethridge's UV-cured pigment print, Ranunculus in Copper Pot at Hermes, 24 rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré Rooftop (2023), for $16,000 each, and Ernie Barnes's 1995 Study II for The Dream Unfolds was also on hold. Interest came 'across the board,' Kreps said, primarily from collectors in New York and Miami. When ARTnews asked if he was concerned about sales at Frieze during what many consider a cooling interest in contemporary art, Kreps replied that it helped that his prices were in the low-to-mid range. 'Today, I felt there would be a lot of enthusiasm, and I think people are wanting to get out there and think about art,' he told ARTnews For its booth, Casey Kaplan Gallery had a solo presentation of glass and stainless steel sculptures by Hannah Levy, with several works, priced between $45,000 and $80,000, selling to US-based collectors during the first day. 'It's been good energy,' senior director Emily Epelbaum-Bush told ARTnews, noting new collectors and curators dropping by the booth. 'We've seen people we haven't seen in some time. We're really excited about the beginning of the fair.' Goodman Gallery, which has locations in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as New York and London, had a group display highlighting artists who have had important international spotlights over the past year. A large-scale painting by Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, fresh from her solo exhibition last year at the Barbican in London, sold for $90,000 to 'a seminal New York collection,' the gallery said. Additionally, a work by Carrie Mae Weems, from her 2021 series 'Painting the Town,' sold for $100,000 to a Dutch collector. Both works were sold with the promise that they would be donated to institutions in the future, according to the gallery. Their presentation also includes works by William Kentridge, Shirin Neshat, and Ravelle Pillay, alongside new pieces by Yinka Shonibare and Kapwani Kiwanga. 'Obviously, you know, it's an intriguing time to be in the United States—if not the world,' said Anthony Dawson, director of the gallery's Cape Town location. 'It's wonderful to see that people are still so committed to the production of contemporary art.' Karma also reported a successful first day at Frieze New York, led by the $350,000 sale of Owl for Emil (1958), a modestly sized painting by Gertrude Abercrombie, who is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Other noteworthy sales include Richard Mayhew's Mountain Mindscape (1969) for $350,000, Manoucher Yektai's Blue Table (1960) for $275,000, and Reggie Burrows Hodges's Referees: To The House (2021) for $175,000. Tina Kim, who brought to the fair a range of works from the women artists in their program, sold works by Lee ShinJa, Ghada Amer, Pacita Abad, and Suki Seokyeong Kang for between $80,000 and $200,000. It's not surprising that there was a great deal of interest in the future of Frieze, which as of last week has a new owner (if only tangentially). Earlier this month, Endeavor Group Holdings sold Frieze, along with its magazine and global portfolio of fairs, to its Ari Emmanuel, Endeavor's former CEO, and a consortium of investors for a reported $200 million. That sale was the spark of speculation among more than a handful of VIP day attendees, though few were willing to speculate or give Frieze's new owners advice. 'There's an opportunity here, to really increase the revenue stream and come up with a new, innovative business model,' author and art market observer Magnus Resch told ARTnews. 'The simple business model of real estate arbitrage isn't working anymore. You can't just open new locations.' For Resch, the future of art fairs would involve variable pricing models for the galleries that participate and an expanded offering: watches and collectibles, something Resch admits might alienate existing patrons. He added, 'Frieze has a chance to become the leading player in the art world. They just have to stop living in the past.' Best of Robb Report The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way) In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties Click here to read the full article.
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Gretchen Dow Simpson, Creator of New Yorker Covers, Dies at 85
Gretchen Dow Simpson, an acclaimed Rhode Island painter whose moody, highly geometric images of seaside cottages, snow-covered farms and other totems of New England life drew comparisons to Edward Hopper and graced the covers of 58 issues of The New Yorker, died on April 11 at her home in Providence, R.I. She was 85. The cause was complications of Lewy body dementia, her daughter Megan Wolff said. Ms. Simpson was best known for her meditative images of the seaside and country architecture of the Northeastern seaboard — 'those rather Protestant exteriors and interiors that Edward Hopper was so taken with,' Carl Little wrote in 1997 in reviewing a Manhattan exhibition of her work for Art in America. While modest, solitary buildings were often her subject matter, Ms. Simpson's work was not purely representational. A former commercial photographer, she applied a telephoto approach to many of her paintings, zooming in on windows, doorways or rooftops to emphasize the juxtaposed angles and intersecting lines that characterized her work, giving it the feel of abstract art. As ARTnews noted in a 1995 review of an exhibition of her paintings, Ms. Simpson's 'emphasis on the solid geometry of the buildings as well as the planar geometry of surface decoration is further enlivened by the strong contrasts of light and shadow.' Her style became so recognizable that in 1993, Absolut Vodka included it in its celebrated series of print advertisements featuring the distinctive shape of its bottle in a series of playful themes, like the work of Andy Warhol or the sparkling swimming pools of Los Angeles. The 'Absolut Dow Simpson' ad, which fittingly ran on the back cover of The New Yorker, featured a haunting late-afternoon shadow in the shape of the bottle, cast upon a white clapboard wall. Over the years, Ms. Simpson's work was commissioned by The Atlantic Monthly (now The Atlantic), New York magazine and other publications, and featured in solo exhibitions in New England and New York City. But it was her two-decade run producing cover paintings for The New Yorker that most shaped her legacy. Even so, it took her almost a decade to break through. As she recounted on a 2011 radio program, she had been receiving rejection notes from the magazine for nine years before the art director, Lee Lorenz, called her into a meeting in 1974. As for the subject matter, she recalled, Mr. Lorenz told her, 'Paint what you like, not what you think we would like.' She ended up snapping a photograph of the hallway of a friend's apartment, which had an arched doorway, and using it as the basis of her first New Yorker painting, which appeared on the cover of the Aug. 19, 1974, issue. Ms. Simpson went on to produce 57 more covers for The New Yorker, attracting fan mail from readers around the country. 'They react in such a personal way that they write me letters telling me details about their family life,' she said in an interview with the magazine. 'They're practically inviting me to come in and eat the leftovers from their icebox.' Gretchen Hansell Dow was born on May 17, 1939, in Cambridge, Mass., the eldest of four children of Richard Dow, the director of a real estate firm, and Elizabeth (Sagendorph) Dow. After graduating from the Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill, Mass., in 1957, she spent two years studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. She then moved to New York City, where she worked as a photographer at an advertising agency while pursuing her artistic ambitions. In 1968, she married John Simpson Jr., an actor, and the next year they moved to Waverly, Pa., near Scranton, where Ms. Simpson spent afternoons painting in a converted barn studio. The couple had two daughters before divorcing in 1982. Ms. Simpson settled in Providence in 1987. In 1989, just before her 50th birthday, Ms. Simpson tallied her 50th New Yorker cover, a close-up image of gold and silver dance shoes. It was a sly tribute to her midlife turn as a competitive ballroom dancer, whirling her six-foot-tall frame around the floor to achieve mastery in the fox trot, the tango, the cha-cha and other dances. While she 'hadn't done much dancing since my coming-out cotillion in Boston,' she said in a 1989 interview with The New York Times, she found satisfaction in dancing as both art and exercise. 'Jogging bores me, aerobics gives me a headache, tennis is too social and squash too claustrophobic,' she added. 'With ballroom dancing, you're using every muscle and along with that you have the plus of glamour and illusion.' In 2013, at age 73, Ms. Simpson married again, to James Baird, a retired Brown University chemistry professor. He survives her. Over the years, she unveiled a number of murals in Pawtucket, R.I., including a giant one on Interstate 95 of the interior of an industrial building. It's still there today. In addition to her husband and her daughter Megan, Ms. Simpson is survived by her other daughter, Phoebe Bean, and four grandchildren. Her long run at The New Yorker ended in 1993, the year after Tina Brown, the swashbuckling former editor of Vanity Fair, took over and ushered in a series of sweeping changes, including more topical and gag covers in place of the traditional stately ones that had served as artworks in their own right. As Ms. Simpson later recalled, Ms. Brown 'did buy one painting to be used as a cover, but only because it reminded her of her own property in the Hamptons.'
Web Release
16-04-2025
- Business
- Web Release
Art Dubai to Launch 18th Edition Amid Surge in UAE Wealth
Art Dubai is set to return for its 18th edition next week, promising an invigorated showcase of contemporary art against the backdrop of Dubai's growing reputation as a cultural and financial hub. Running from April 16, with a VIP preview, at the Madinat Jumeirah, this year's fair will feature over 120 galleries, accompanied by a slate of new commissions, digital installations, and panel discussions — all aimed at exploring the interplay between culture and technology within today's art world. Since its founding in 2007, Art Dubai has positioned itself as far more than just a commercial fair. It has evolved into a creative incubator where regional voices meet global audiences, cementing its identity as a cultural bridge within the Middle East. This year's edition arrives at a moment when Dubai's art scene is experiencing newfound momentum, propelled by regional biennials and festivals that are putting the spotlight on Gulf art. Recent additions to the region's cultural calendar — including the Sharjah Biennial, which held its 16th edition in February, and Saudi Arabia's second Islamic Arts Biennale, launched this January — reflect the Middle East's ambitious vision to develop as an international arts destination. Events such as the AlUla Arts Festival and Art Week Riyadh further solidify Saudi Arabia and the UAE's standing as serious players in the global cultural landscape. This surge in cultural programming has not gone unnoticed by international galleries. Among this year's first-time exhibitors is New York-based Bortolami Gallery, whose participation signals growing Western interest in the region's market and creative networks. Senior director Evan Reiser described their presence at the fair as an 'exploratory mission' to better understand local collectors, meet artists, and assess future opportunities. 'We have to try to understand the market ahead of time and understand what people are looking for, meeting the obligation to our artists to introduce their work to new audiences,' Reiser noted. The gallery will present works by an impressive roster of artists including Daniel Buren, Robert Bordo, and Leda Catunda, providing visitors a diverse glimpse into contemporary art's global landscape. As Dubai's art fair matures, its local gallery scene is expanding in tandem. Sunny Rahbar, founder of The Third Line — one of the city's pioneering contemporary art galleries — notes the accelerating pace of growth. 'The art scene is booming,' Rahbar told ARTnews. 'So many galleries have opened in the last three or four years.' She attributes the post-pandemic surge to Dubai's swift reopening to tourism and its global reputation for resilience. Dubai's appeal has drawn not only Western collectors but also a wave of Arab expatriates, from Lebanon, Egypt, and Iran, who now see the UAE as both a cultural and economic home. Reflecting that sentiment, The Third Line will exhibit works by Amir H. Fallah, Hayv Kahraman, and Kamran Samimi at this year's fair — each representing contemporary voices from the Middle East and its diaspora. Art Dubai has become a symbol of the UAE's larger economic diversification strategy. Once heavily dependent on oil, the UAE's government has worked for more than a decade to reposition the Emirates as a cultural and business hub for the region. Landmark initiatives, such as the Saadiyat Island cultural district — home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi — are testament to the country's commitment to investing in the arts. Non-oil sectors now account for nearly 75% of the UAE's GDP, with non-oil growth reaching 4.6% last year and projected to climb to 5% in 2025. Art Dubai, while modest in size compared to global fairs like Art Basel, continues to mirror this economic momentum and offers collectors, galleries, and artists an increasingly attractive gateway to the Middle Eastern art market. As Mohammed Hafiz, cofounder of Jeddah-based ATHR gallery, puts it: 'The art market in Dubai, like the economy, is growing — it's maturing. You can't compare the UAE or Saudi Arabia to New York, of course, but, like anywhere in the art world, you travel to meet people and build relationships, and these relationships grow with time.' This growth isn't confined to art alone. The rise in high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) is reshaping Dubai's luxury ecosystem. A report by New World Wealth and Henley & Partners predicted a 39% surge in the number of HNWIs in the UAE between 2021 and 2026, from 160,000 to more than 228,000. Dubai itself has seen the number of millionaires double over the past decade, with forecasts suggesting this figure will double again by 2035. 'This is already impacting favorably on the luxury market in the region and will only stand to benefit Art Dubai and the galleries here in Dubai, which is very much the center of the Gulf and regional art market,' said Ben Floyd, CEO of Art Dubai Group. To further strengthen its international profile, Art Dubai recently announced two significant leadership hires. Dunja Gottweis, formerly Art Basel's global head of gallery relations, was appointed as the new fair director, while Alexie Glass-Kantor, previously executive director of Artspace in Sydney, has stepped into the newly created role of executive director, curatorial. These appointments are already generating increased attention from collectors, partners, and galleries eager to enter the region's art market. Much like Hong Kong's transformation into a gateway for global art and commerce, Dubai's blend of free trade zones, world-class security, and British-style legal frameworks continues to attract international talent and investment. Art Dubai, as both a cultural and commercial platform, is poised to evolve into a vital meeting ground for the international art world and a key barometer for the Gulf's flourishing creative economy.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
This M. F. Husain Painting Just Sold for $13.8 Million at Auction, Shattering a Record for Modern Indian Art
M. F. Husain's Untitled (Gram Yatra) sold at Christie's for $13.8 million in New York, making it the most expensive work of modern Indian art ever publicly auctioned. That amount, which includes fees, shattered the auction house's estimate of $2.5 million–$3.5 million and was more than four times the artist's previous record of $3.1 million, which was set by his painting Untitled (Reincarnation) last September at Sotheby's in London. More from Robb Report A Lavish $23.5 Million French Renaissance Mansion in Dallas Is Fit for Royalty Exclusive Luxury Comes to the Southern Tip of Eleuthera This West Palm Beach Penthouse With an Artistic Legacy Can Be Yours for $1.5 Million The previous record for a modern Indian work was $7.4 million, for Amrita Sher-Gil's The Story Teller (1937), which sold in September 2023 in Mumbai. (S. H. Raza's 1959 painting Kallisté, which sold last March at Sotheby's for $5.6 million, was given an estimate of $2 million–$3 million—the highest price ever put on a modern Indian artwork at auction, a spokesperson for that house said.) The Husain record was mintedduring Christie's sale for South Asian modern and contemporary art, a category which continues to garner momentum despite a fragmented art market. The 1954 painting, which is nearly 14 feet long, was a consignment 13 years in the making and one that Nishad Avari, the New York–based head of Christie's South Asian modern and contemporary art department, called 'by far one of the most significant works' he's seen in his career. Avari told ARTnews that, prior to the sale, his department had hoped Untitled (Gram Yatra) would change Husain's market, which has lagged compared to F. H. Souza and Raza, two other members of the Progressive Artists' Group. Of the Husain painting, Avari said, 'It comprises of 13 separate vignettes of village life in India, which is really important, because this is five years after Indian independence, and Husain and all his colleagues are trying to figure out at the time what it means to be a modern Indian artist.' In the painting Untitled (Gram Yatra), Husain emphasizes the centrality of village and rural life in India as the basis for going forward as a new nation. Avari also noted that one of the 13 vignettes portrays a standing farmer—the only male figure in the in the piece. This is a self-portrait of sorts, and the only image which crosses into another vignette of a landscape with fields. 'It's literally a portrait of a farmer as a sustainer of the land and a protector of the land,' Avari said. The original owner of the painting was Leon Elias Volodarsky, a Norwegian general surgeon and private art collector, who acquired Untitled (Gram Yatra) in New Delhi in 1954, while heading a World Health Organization team stationed there to establish a thoracic surgery training center. Volodarsky's estate donated it to the Oslo University Hospital in 1964. When the hospital first contacted Christie's about Untitled (Gram Yatra), Avari said his team's immediate response was: 'We're getting on a plane.' For seven decades, Untitled (Gram Yatra) was unavailable for viewing by the public. 'It was in a private neuroscience corridor,' Avari said. The 13-year process to get it to the auction block on March 19 included gaining the necessary permissions from the Oslo University Hospital's board when the institution was finally ready to sell. 'What's really, really gratifying, is that the proceeds are going to be used to set up a training center for doctors in Dr. Volodarsky's name,' Avari said. Best of Robb Report The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way) In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties Click here to read the full article.
