Contemporary Art

CHRISTIE’S are launching a fair during Frieze week for dealers and publishers specialising in contemporary editions. The auctioneers' South Kensington saleroom will be given over to the event, titled Multiplied, focused primarily on prints, photography, sculpture and artists’ books.

THE latest Contemporary art sales in London were a little flatter than expected, but Modern British art generated a batch of stand-out prices.

IF major auctions in New York are anything to go by, then the amount of money being spent on blue-chip pieces of Modern and Contemporary art is now almost back to the level seen before the market crashed 18 months ago.

SOTHEBY’S staged the most lucrative art sale ever in the Netherlands on March 8 when they offered a 161-lot selection of contemporary art from the corporate collection of British American Tobacco.

SIGNS of recovery at the top end of the art market were seen again as greater levels of international bidding emerged at the latest contemporary art auction series in London.

IF you’re looking for a painting that sums up the problems suffered by the contemporary art market over the last year, then this work by Peter Doig (b.1959) is a pretty good candidate.

SUSSEX auctioneer John Nicholson is claiming a significant breakthrough in establishing the existence of artist Pietro Psaier and his links with Andy Warhol.

Conservative estimates tailored to new realities enabled the New York flagship sales of post-War and contemporary art to set solid selling rates. But, for both major houses, the financial gulf between this year and 2008 was enormous.

THE latest series of contemporary art auctions in New York showed how much the market has fallen since its peak. With sale totals down well over 50 per cent from last year’s autumn series held at the height of the boom, the extent of the damage caused by the current economic distress and diminished confidence amongst buyers was manifest. The question now is will prices stabilise or fall further?

COMING just hours after the election of Barack Obama in the US, a poster of the new President-elect sold at Bonhams & Butterfields in California for a double-estimate $4800 (£3145).

THE balloon-like market for contemporary art lost much of its air last week as both the Frieze Art Fair and its related auctions suffered the full force of the global economic crisis.

THE contemporary art downturn had a tangible effect on the market for urban art as the sales staged in London by Bonhams in New Bond Street on October 23 and Dreweatts in Shoreditch on October 14 witnessed greater selectivity amongst buyers.

THE question of authenticity remains high on the agenda in the Banksy market after a last-minute intervention by the self-styled guerrilla artist had a devastating effect on Lyon & Turnbull’s latest attempt to break into the London contemporary art market.

As experienced art dealers discussed the £95.6m sale of 233 new works by Damien Hirst (b.1965), it was the word 'celebrity' that cropped up the most to explain the phenomenal prices seen at the Beautiful Inside my Head Forever sale.

STREET art by Banksy – until now a problem area at auction because of authentication – is about to be brought in from the cold thanks to a new independent verification body.

SOTHEBY’S dependence on the contemporary art market could hardly be clearer than in their latest set of figures.

LONDON’S latest contemporary art sales saw vast sums of money continuing to be channelled into top-end post-War art as prices and confidence in the market remained high.

Sotheby’s have announced the highlight of their autumn series: an auction of new works consigned by Damien Hirst on September 15-16.