Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog (Orange) was sold for $58,4M and set a new record

During the Post-War & Contemporary Evening Sale at Christie's New York on 12 November, which totalized $691,583,000 (including buyer's premium), Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog (Orange) realized $58,405,000 achieving world auction record for a living artist.

 Signed and dated 'Jeff Koons 1994-2000' (on the underside), Balloon Dog (Orange) is a 121x143x45in (307.3x363.2x114.3cm) mirror-polished stainless steel "inflatable" sculpture with a translucent colour coating.
This work is one of five unique versions (Blue, Magenta, Orange, Red, Yellow), part of the highly acclaimed Celebration series of paintings and sculptures that Koons instigated in the early 1990s. 



The one-ton metal balloon sculpture is formed by 60 parts welded together to produce the simple, but very suggestive shapes, as well to convey an illusion of weightlessness. Jeff Koons worked closely during years with a specialist foundry in California perfecting the meticulous colour coating that appears to hover abouve the stainless-steel surface.

Francis Bacon's Three Studies of Lucian Freud sets record price for a painting sold at auction

Painted in 1969 at London's Royal College of Art, after his studio was destroyed in a fire, Francis Bacon's triptych Three Studies of Lucian Freud, as set a new record for a painting sold at auction. The painting was sold at Christie's New York after six minutes of fierce bidding for $142m (£89m, €106m), easily surpassing the previous record of $119.9m (£74m) paid last year for Edvard Munch's The Scream.


 Considered one of Bacon's greatest masterpieces, the triptych marks the friendship between Bacon and Lucian Freud, who got acquainted in 1945 and became close companions, painting each other on a number of occasions.

 This was the first time that the Three Studies of Lucian Freud  had been offered at auction and bidding opened at $80m (£50m, 60m euros). Its presale estimate was $85m (£53m, €64m).

 Exhibited in Francis Bacon's retrospective at the Grand Palais, Paris in 1971-1972, the three panels that form the painting were separated in the mid-1970s.
Later in 1985, one panel was shown at the Tate, before the three sections were reassembled.
The complete work was displayed in New Haven, Connecticut in 1999 and in October this year it got its first ever UK public viewing at Christie's in London.

 The absolute record for a work of art belongs to Cézanne's painting "The Card Players" sold in 2011 for €190 million (£158 million, $250 million) to the royal family of Qatar, beating the previous record of €106.4 million (£88.7  million, $141 million) paid for Jackson Pollock’s “No 5, 1948” sold by David Geffen in 2006. 

Over 1500 Paintings and Sketches found in Cornelius Gurlitt's apartment in Munich

In the last couple of years, German authorities have started checking more frequently for tax evasion carried out by wealthy citizens, namely through deposits in Switzerland.

 It was during one of those checks on a train from Switzerland in September 2010, that Cornelius Gurlitt, sole survival son of art dealer Hildebrandt Gurlitt, was caught with an envelope containing 9,000 Euros in cash. Cornelius had never worked and presented no other means of income.

 Official authorities issued a search warrant for his near €700-a-month rented apartment in Munich suburb of Schwabing and in 2011 the over 1500 paintings and sketches estimated to be worth over 1 billion Euro were discovered. 
Bizarre enough, the works of art were stashed behind piles of canned food and noodles that would reach the ceiling, much of it from the 1980's.

However, customs issued a ban on information about the raid and things were kept in secret from the public. But now the German magazine Focus has published an article about this surprising case and the story has been revealed to the public. A case worthy of a novel, such are the ingredients and the people directly and inderectly involved.

 Among the paintings and sketches, are famous names such as Albrecht Dürer, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, Ernst LLudwig Kirchner, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann, Oskar Kokoschka, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee.

 Hildebrandt Gurlitt had supposedly acquired those artworks in the 1930s and 40s from Jews who would dispose of their valuable works of art for a pittance in exchange for escaping from the Nazis. At a later date, Hildebrandt reported them all to be destroyed during the vast bombing of Dresden in February 1945.
His Jewish ascendancy and initial opposition to Nazism made him, in the perspective of the Allies, a victim not a persecutor and was never acused of taking advantage of Jews by acquiring and selling their collections for scanty amounts of money in exchange for their escape to safe countries. Hildebrandt  carried on dealing in art until 1956 when he was killed in a car crash.

 Included in the discovered paintings is a portrait of a woman by the French master Matisse that belonged to the Jewish French art dealer Paul Rosenberg, who had to leave behind his collection before his escape from Paris when the country fell in 1940. Rosenberg was renowned for representing Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Him and his brother Léonce Rosenberg were among the world's major dealers of Modern art.
 
 Paul Rosenberg's granddaughter Anne Sinclair, the wife of former top banker Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been fighting for decades for the return of his artworks stolen by the Nazis, but according to Focus she 'knew nothing' of the existence of this painting.

 Art historians in charge of examining the Cornelius Gurlitt collection claim that near 300 of those works were part of an Munich exhibition organized in 1937 by the Nazi called 'Degenerate Art' (Enkartete Kunst) - modern 'dissident' pieces to show German people what not to like.

 Hitler, who himself had been a watercolourist, liked only romantic paintings that idolised his vision and art movements such as modernism and cubism had no place in the Third Reich. Together with his propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, Hitler confiscated near 20,000 such works before WW2.

XVIII Galeria Aberta - Beja 2013

 The Escudeiros Gallery (Galeria dos Escudeiros) was this year's chosen venue for the opening of the XVIII Galeria Aberta, in the Portuguese city of Beja.
The event was atended by many artists and public in general, once again demonstrating the continuous success of this initiative throughout the years.

 This 18th edition of Galeria Aberta shows the works of 183 artists from several countries, mostly from Portugal and Spain. The range varies between drawing, painting, instalation, sculpture, photography and mixed media.

 Visitors to the exhibition will be able to enjoy the different use of media and see how each artist conveys his/her ideas through their use. From classical to contemporary, or from realism to abstraccionism, the range of artworks exhibited will make your visit worthwhile.

 Due to the high number of participating artists, the exhibition takes place in three venues:

Galeria dos Escudeiros - Rua dos Escudeiros, 30
Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Beja - Rua D. Manuel I
Casa do Governador (inside the castle) - Largo do Lidador
 

The XVIII Galeria Aberta - Beja 2013, can be visited until the 15 November 2013.
Admitance is free.
For further information, please call +351 284 311 910.

Organized by the City Hall of Beja and Escudeiros - Galeria Municipal, with the support of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Beja and the sponsorship of Liberty Seguros.

Nightmare on Main Street 2013 - Call to Artist Students

NYU Abu Dhabi seeks a Professor for its Visual Arts Program

NYU Abu Dhabi is seeking for its Visual Arts Program, an innovative and accomplished artist-teacher, with a strong professional profile and a demonstrated commitment to undergratuate teaching. This is an open-rank search for a renewable arts contract position.

  Candidates should hold an MFA and/or have extensive professional experience as an artist (painting and/or sculpture) as well as significant experience teaching in internationally recognized visual arts programs and/or liberal arts universities.
The successful candidate will be deeply interested in interdisciplinary work and committed to working
collaboratively on creating curriculum and mentoring student projects from technical, theoretical,
and aesthetic perspectives.

 Faculty position encompasses three undergraduate courses per year (semester system), including at least one in the core curriculum. Engaging in both teaching and research opportunities at NYU New York and other sites of its global network will be possible.
Please visit the page of the Visual Arts Program for a description of its innovative curriculum

 The terms of employment are competitive and include housing and educational subsidies for
children. Members of NYU Abu Dhabi standing faculty receive generous support for research and
travel.

 The appointment will begin as soon as September 1, 2014, with a later start date possible, pending candidate availability.

 Applications are due by October 15th and will be reviewed until the position is filled.
To be considered, applicants should submit a cover letter describing their training, experience, teaching
philosophy, and approach to making art; a Curriculum Vitae; and three letters of reference, all in
PDF format.

 Instructions and other information on how to aplly, as well as other open faculty positions, can be retrieved on this page. Any questions can be sent by email.

"Sunset at Montmajour" attributed to Vincent van Gogh

 It was inventoried among Theo van Gogh's collection of his brother's works in 1890 and then sold by Theo's widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger to a Paris art dealer in 1901.
 During the year of 1970, re-emerges as part of the estate of the recently deceased Norwegian industrialist Christian Nicolai Mustad.
However, Mustad was advised by the French ambassador to Sweden that it was not a Van Gogh. As a consequence, "Sunset at Montmajour" was stashed away in the attic, where it stayed until the current owners purchased it from him.

 In 1991, the unsigned painting was taken to the Van Gogh Museum, but at the time the museum experts didn't conclude as authentic.

 About twenty years later, its owners brought back to the museum to seek authentication, and its researchers have been examining it ever since.
Under the supervision of Louis van Tilborgh, the Van Gogh Museum’s senior researcher, it was recently concluded that the work was a genuine van Gogh painting because the pigments correspond with those of van Gogh’s palette from Arles. “This time, we have topographical information plus a number of other factors that have helped us to establish authenticity,” said the museum director,  Mr. Axel Rüger. “Research is so much more advanced now, so we could come to a very different conclusion.”

 Mr. van Tilborgh states that "Sunset at Monmajour" was was painted on the same type of canvas and with the same type of underpainting van Gogh used for at least one other painting of the same area, “The Rocks.” The work was also listed as part of Theo van Gogh’s collection in 1890. It has “180” painted on the back, which corresponds to the number in the collection inventory. “That was the clincher,” he said

 The date of completion of the painting  has been identified as July 4, 1888. This conclusion was based upon a letter that Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother on the next day, where he discribes the scene:

 “Yesterday, at sunset, I was on a stony heath, where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill, and wheat fields in the valley. It was romantic, it couldn’t be more so, à la Monticelli, the sun was pouring its very yellow rays over the bushes and the ground, absolutely a shower of gold. And all the lines were beautiful; the whole scene had charming nobility.”

 The painter moved to Arles in February 1888, where he spent time exploring the landscapes in Provence and doing plein air painting. Van Gogh was particularly fascinated by the flat landscape around the hill of Montmajour, with its rocky outcroppings and hay-colored fields.

In a letter dated July 1888, he said that he had been to Montmajour at least 50 times “to see the view over the plain.”

 Art historian Mr. Leeman, said that “in hindsight, many pointers in his letters and entries in catalogs of the 1900s have been linked to other paintings or misidentified,” adding, “Here, we see a painting that fits those descriptions exactly.”

 Depicting dusk in the hilly, forested landscape of Montmajour, in Provence, with wheat fields and the ruins of a Benedictine abbey in the distance, the 73.3 cm × 93.3 cm (28.9 in × 36.7 in) oil painting was completed during the most important period of van Gogh's life, when he created his significant masterpieces, such as 'Sunflowers,' 'The Bedroom' and 'The Yellow House.'

 "Sunset at Montmajour" will be on display at the van Gogh Museum during one year, starting on September 24, as part of the current exhibition, "Van Gogh at Work," which focuses on other new discoveries about the painter’s artistic development.
According to Mr. Rüger, the current owners have not indicated what they intend to do with it after that.

 This is the first full-size painting by Van Gogh to be discovered since 1928.

Made in Hollywood - Photos from the John Kobal Foundation

Conceived by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (US), "Made in Hollywood" shows the original photos by some of the most prominent photographers of the Hollywood studios between 1920 and 1960, such as George Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Laszlo Willinger, Ernest Bachrach, A.L."Whitey" Schaefer, Bob Coburn, William Walling, E.R. Richee and Scotty Welbourne.

 The 93 photos belonging to the John Kobal Foundation and in exhibition at the Centro Cultural de Cascais, portray some of the most famous movie stars and symbols of the Hollywood studios golden era. Some of the names include Buster Keaton, Elizabeth Taylor, Gary Cooper, Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo,Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marylin Monroe and Rita Hayworth.

 Parallel activities will take place during the time of the exhibition, including a film programme in the movie hall Dr. Félix Ribeiro at the Cinemateca Portuguesa:

July 1 - Opening session with movie critique José Matos-Cruz.
Movie: "Suddenly Last Summer" (1959)

July 2 - 15h30 -  "Sabrina" (1954)
             19h30 - "Monkey Business" (1952)

July 3 - 15h30 - "The Young Lions" (1958)
July 4 - 15h30 - "Morocco" (1930)
July 5 - 19h00 - "Macao" (1952) - Closing session with the participation of Simon Crocker, President of the John Kobal Foundation.

 The exhibition "Made in Hollywood - Fotografias da Fundação John Kobal" is presented in Portugal by the Fundação D. Luis I, with the collaboration of the City Hall of Cascais, and can be visited free of charge at the Centro Cultural de Cascais until September 1, 2013 (Tuesday - Sunday; 10h00 - 18h00).
Terra Esplêndida is responsible for the production.

 Besides his participation at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, Simon Croker will also be at the exhibition on the same day at 15h00, for a guided visit. An event that the public will not want to miss.

Visit Art Basel 2013 During The Weekend

 If you are in Switzerland or nearby, why not reserve some of your time this weekend and visit one of the most renowned art fairs in the world?

 The 2013 edition of Art Basel, puts the public in direct contact with Modern and Contemporary art, ranging from the great masters of the 20th century to 21st century artworks, including the latest generation of emerging arists. All represented by 230 of the world's leading galleries.

 With more than 4000 artists represented, most of the artistic medium are represented at the fair, including paintings, sculpture, installations, videos, multiples, prints, photography, and performance.
Art Basel 2013 offers eight sectors that complement each other and enrich the visitor's experience.

Curated projects include solo presentations, juxtapositions, or thematic exhibits.
Each year, two outstanding young emerging artists from the statements sector, are awarded with the Baloise Art Prize. These solo projects are acquired by the Baloise Group, which are then donated to renowned European art institutions.

 Unlimited is an exhibition platform dedicated to projects that transcend the physical limitations of a common art-show stand. Large-scale installations, out-sized sculptures and paintings, video projections and live performances, are some of the innovative works exhibited on this platform. Unlimited is curated by New York-based curator Gianni Jetzer.


 Berlin film scholar Marc Glöde and Zurich collector This Brunner, are the curators of the film section,  a week-long programme dedicated to films by and about artists.

 Enhancing the experience beyond Basel's headquarters, Parcours engages the public with interventions and performances by renowned international artists and emerging talents, as well with site-specific sculptures.
This section is curated by Florence Derieux and is open to the public.

 Visitors can acess some of the most prominent art publications from around the world.
Editors and publishers are often present  and many magazines contribute with presentations to the Salon series, including lectures and panel discussions.

 Beyond these sectors, Art Basel offers a full programme of events that include symposiums and artist talks.
The morning Conversation series, enables the audience to access to an insider's point of view, while Dynamic dialogues take place between prominent members of the artworld, each sharing their unique perspective on producing, exhibiting and collecting art. Conversations is presented in collaboration with the Absolut Art Bureau.

 A mobile app is available for Art Basel, providing essential information as well as an interactive 3D-map and events listing.

 Tickets can be purchased online until the last day of the art fair.

Video curtesy of Vernissage TV

Operation "Rainbow" seizes near 300 fake paintings in Portugal

 In the scope of investigations concerning art faking and forgery, the Lisboa e Vale do Tejo Directory of the Portuguese Judiciary Police, initiated an operation entitled "Arco-íris" (Rainbow).
During the operation, the involved agents managed to detect and seize near 300 presumably fake paintings, allegedly by the renowned artists Paula Rego and António Palolo.

 The paintings, found in the possession of several merchants and collectors, were apprehended in the sequence of persistant investigation and house searching in the city of Lisbon and around its outskirts. The authorities also managed to find and apprehend some fake authenticity certificates corroborating the authenticity of the artworks.

 For its unprecedented number of fakes focusing on just two authors, the result of this investigation is the biggest of its genre accomplished in Portugal up to date.

 An antiques dealer, found in the possession of several artworks and suspected of introducing fake paintings into the art market, was constituted defendant.