Contemporary Art

The former collection of Dmitri Snegaroff (1885-1959) was the focus of attention at the Modern and Contemporary art sale at ArtCurial (20.93% buyer’s premium) on February 22-23.

Buoyed by rising stockmarkets and the continuing strength of the euro against the pound, European private collectors were buying in force at Sotheby’s and Christie’s February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art sales in London.

NO more the enfant terrible of the Brit-Art world, shark man Damien Hirst is quite at home in salubrious Knightsbridge, especially after he walked away with £11m from his famous Pharmacy sale at Sotheby’s.

THE appearance of a significant Lenkiewicz forgery on the market has prompted the foundation dedicated to the artist to set up an authentication service.

Back in the late 1920s, during the height of the so-called Etching Boom, prints by Scottish contemporary artists such as Muirhead Bone, David Young Cameron and James McBey were the subject of the sort of feverish speculation which now characterises the market for cutting-edge names like Damien Hirst, Richard Prince and Maurizio Cattelan.

Damien Hirst’s tiger shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde, once the centrepiece of the Charles Saatchi collection and arguably the best-known work by a late 20th century British artist, has been sold to an American collector for a price close to £7m.

THE market for Contemporary art maintained its seemingly unstoppable momentum in New York last week.

FRIEZE, the contemporary art fair launched to much critcal and commerical acclaim in Regent’s Park last year, is to have a supporting act this October.

DECADES before Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde sheep and the 1990s explosion of Britart, London was swinging to the rhythm of Pop Art’s movers and shakers. Forty years have now passed since the height of this international movement prompting Christie’s South Kensington (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) to host the first of what they hope will become an annual Pop Art themed sale on June 30.

WITH selling rates that rarely dip below 80 per cent and steadily increasing totals that are the envy of more traditional departments, auctions of Contemporary art continue to go from strength to strength.

HAVING spent millions of pounds revamping their Bond Street flagship saleroom, could Bonhams (19.5/12% buyer’s premium) succeed in attracting the sort of prestigious consignments of Modern and Contemporary art which are going to be the life-blood of any successful international auction house in the early 21st century?

TWENTIETH century and Contemporary art underlined their status as the key growth areas for the major auction houses when London’s June round of Part I Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales netted £120.4m. Six months ago the equivalent sales took £94m, while back in June 2003 – when war was raging in Iraq – they could only muster a relatively modest £81m.

FLORIDA art fair Palm Beach Contemporary is to be known as PalmBeach3 for its next staging at the Palm Beach County Convention Center from January 13 to 17, 2005. The name has been chosen to reflect the new three-part structure of the event.

INCREASINGLY, London is showing its teeth as one of the world’s nuclei for international Contemporary art. And, with last week’s opening of two substantial commercial art galleries, its status is going only one way – upwards.

INSURERS Axa Art have promised to settle claims linked to art lost in last week’s fire at Momart’s London warehouse as soon as possible.

NOW in its sixth year artLONDON has proved a popular and worthy addition to the roster of June fairs. Indeed, in this relatively short time it has become as much a part of the London summer scene as its much more venerable and mainstream stablemates, such as Grosvenor House and Olympia.

ON The Wall is the name of a new fair aimed at the contemporary art market which will be launched from September 29 to October 3 at the Grand Hall, Olympia.

RECENTLY renamed and relocated, Bloomsbury Auctions have launched an Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary art department.

An unprecedented crowd of over 500 people turned up to watch, if not bid, at Sotheby’s near sell-out Part I auction of contemporary art on February 5. A stream of telephone bids created numerous eye-catching results, including new auction highs for Nicolas de Staël (£1.15m), Richard Hamilton (£100,000), R.B. Kitaj (£220,000), Paul Pfeiffer (£40,000) and last year’s Turner Prizewinner Grayson Perry (b.1960).

Contemporary art shines in London: The February round of Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary sales in London gave plenty of evidence that the top end of the art market has made a strong recovery from last year’s bout of Iraq War syndrome.