International

It is time to celebrate the art of works on paper in Paris. Centred around the 27-year-old specialist fair, the Salon du Dessin, held from March 21-26, will be a whole roster of auctions, fairs, dealers’ selling shows and events in the city’s museums and institutions.

The roster of exhibitor names at the Salon du Dessin underscores the international standing of this specialist event. Although it is organised by a committee of Paris dealers, more than half the participants come from overseas.

Clients of the collapsed Australian auction house Mossgreen are preparing to challenge the fees being demanded by firm’s administrators to collect their own goods.

Sold for $28,000 (£20,820) by Christie’s New York (25/20/12.5% buyer’s premium) on December 5 was this original drawing by Ralph Steadman for the 1971 first appearance of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

With options to sell at regular intervals in North America, Europe, Hong Kong or China, the major auction houses and their vendors take a global view of the Asian art market.

Private sales and Asian buyers helped Sotheby’s report a 12% jump in sales last year to $5.5bn (£4bn).

As well as the ‘big three’, a clutch of other US salerooms will be holding specialist Asian art sales in mid March.

Mid March in Manhattan is when the art market turns its cultural and commercial face east. This is the first of two New York Asian auction series (the other is in September), but what distinguishes the spring event, dubbed Asia Week New York (AWNY), is the input of dealer exhibitions.

J’y Reste (I am there) is a clay sculpture evoking a symbolic birth created by Brigitte Moity in her studio at Savigny-sur-Orge, a suburb of Paris.

Tour & Taxis in Brussels is a vast swathe of Victorian industrial warehouses on the city’s canal. The complex includes the former train station and its spacious central hall, a long-disused international postal and customs office with links to the German Thurn and Taxis family.