Despite overall sales being down, this was still a banner year for art auctions, with a huge number of world record-setting sales. Many people are calling the end of this decade a new Gilded Age, and collectors all over the world have been willing to spend enormous sums, on everything from 19th-century Impressionists to Post-Modern masters and iconic street artists. This insatiable appetite for art has been affected by global uncertainties and trade wars, but interest remains strong.
Art News
Any Grateful Dead fan will attest to Jerry Garcia’s power as a musician, but the legendary guitarist and singer was also an accomplished visual artist, a fact known only to a small group of devoted Deadheads.
Before the Shot, an iconic painting by Norman Rockwell, was one of the top lots at Phillips New York’s 20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 14. Estimated at $2,500,000 - 4,500,000, the work sold for $4,700,000. This is the first time Before the Shot has been sold publicly. The auction overall realized $108 million, a 22 percent increase from the previous year.
For forty years, the canvas sat unrecognized in a private collection in Lyon, France. Now the painting, a recently rediscovered work from Baroque master Artemisia Gentileschi, is coming to the auction block.
Bonhams recent Modern & Contemporary Prints & Multiples auction included famous prints as well as lesser-known treasures. Here are five iconic works that could have been yours.
Celebrity chef and bestselling author Anthony Bourdain, who died last year at the age of 61, had—we’ll just say it—great taste. His personal belongings are being offered in an online auction running through October 30, and they are, singularly and collectively, spectacular.
Yesterday in London the much-anticipated sale of Banksy's 2009 Devolved Parliament set a remarkable new record for the artist at auction.
The exhibition and sale represent the culmination of a lifetime of dedicated and informed collecting by diamond merchant, Benjamin Zucker.
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the world when it successfully launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik-1.
As bubonic plague ravaged seventeenth-century England, the afflicted would find a red cross painted on their door, a warning for visitors to stay out. If, on the other hand, a house had been shown mercy while the rest of the neighborhood succumbed–a matter of happenstance more than anything since no one knew the first thing about disease transmission or treatment–it was cause for decorative commemoration.
