Mr. Ahrenberg bought the publishing rights, and the gallery is now reissuing “Pablo Picasso,” or as art world denizens call it, “the Zervos,” the most prominent catalogue raisonné of Picasso’s paintings and drawings. Comprising 33 volumes and more than 16,000 images, it was the result of an intense four-decade collaboration between the artist and Mr. Zervos.

“Zervos served Picasso very well, and Picasso was very grateful,” said John Richardson, the Picasso biographer.

The pre-order price will be $15,000 for the set; upon the work’s release in November, it will climb to $20,000. While the price tags may startle, in Mr. Ahrenberg’s view they are “irrelevant” to his target audience: “You can’t buy anything original by Picasso for less than $500,000, or maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars, that’s any good,” he said in an interview in Manhattan.

And he says, the price is a relative bargain compared with vintage sets, which themselves are collector’s items routinely selling for around $60,000 at auction and going for close to $200,000 in pristine condition.

A Tome to Rival the Artist Himself (NY Times)

Wang and his lawyer, [Orestes] Brown, say that the vase seller, Hua, gave them the false provenance, the documented history of ownership that buyers rely on in part to determine the value of art and antiques.

According to Brown, Hua also attached a sticker to the bottom of the vase showing it had last been auctioned on Feb. 23, 1989, at a Christie’s sale in South Kensington, England. Wang said Hua had a receipt from the sale.

But Wang, who is supposed to authenticate a piece’s value, never checked with Christie’s or asked to see Hua’s sales slip in evaluating the vase, according to his lawyer. Instead, he concluded that the piece was an authentic 18th-century vase, not a modern copy, based on his own art expertise and the word of a consultant provided by Hua, Wang said.

In Iowa, the torn Christie’s sticker on the vase’s bottom had an illegible number.

If Wang had investigated the sticker on the bottom of the vase — marked “297” under a Christie’s label — he would have figured out the deception immediately. Lot 297 in the February 23, 1989, Christie’s auction in South Kensington was not even a vase: according to a Christie’s spokewoman, it was a 10¼-inch blanc de chine statuette of Guanyin, Buddhism’s goddess of compassion. It had an estimated value of about $100.

Vase that drew $1.7m bid also drawing federal scrutiny

Bloomberg looks behind the scenes at the FBI’s National Stolen Art File led by Bonnie Magness-Gardniner:

The black-market in art “is a very large enterprise,” Magness-Gardiner said in an interview. “Stolen art, stolen antiquities move into a legitimate market very easily.”

Her office serves as a hub for federal law enforcement efforts to combat art theft. She oversees the National Stolen Art File, a database of stolen art and cultural property, as well as the FBI’s “Top Ten Art Crimes” — a Most Wanted list for historic valuables.

Made up of 14 special agents and three prosecutors, the team operates around the country, with each agent in the field overseeing a different region. The team got its start after the looting of cultural treasures in Baghdad following the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has cultivated international ties as it does its work.

To date, the team has recovered more than 2,650 items with a value of more than $150 million, according to the FBI.

Purloined Picassos Chased by FBI Art Sleuths for Wealthy (Bloomberg)

Zeng Fanzhi, Fly (HK$20-25m) HK$39.86m ($5.16m) May 2012

There’s a lot of anticipation surrounding Christie’s sale of Chinese Contemporary Art this weekend based upon the success of Sotheby’s $27m April sale, which showed surprising strength given concerns over China’s domestic economy. The question is whether Chinese Contemporary art (where top works currently sell within a $1-3m band with top prices reaching $10m) is on a trajectory to converge—over the long run—with Western Contemporary works (which sell in a band of $5-20m and top works reach $50m.) Here’s some of the thinking from Jing Daily‘s Chinese language site:

With blue-chip art often referred to as a remarkably consistent asset class on a historical level, expect to see Chinese demand remain strong and pragmatic for the best and most valuable artwork and antiques.

If — as we expect — the Chinese art market is populated more by serious collectors this year, intent on holding onto quality works to sidestep inflation, give face, populate private museums and diversify assets, 2013 could be a better year all around for auction houses in mainland China, Hong Kong, and worldwide. At the same time, baseline prices are still rising slowly against established Western names, making Chinese art still relatively undervalued — something that Chinese collectors keenly understand, which is why they’re purchasing only the best works now and holding onto their collections.

Aside from baseline prices for modernist Chinese painters like Zhang Daqian and Qi Baishi, Chinese buyers have pushed the boundaries of pricing in the contemporary art market as well, leading prices for the best works by top Chinese contemporary artists to pre-global economic crisis levels. As top Western contemporary artists like Warhol, Rothko, Still, Lichtenstein, Bacon and Basquiat all sit firmly in the US$5-50 million range at auction, as time goes by we should see auction prices for multi-million-dollar living contemporary Chinese artists like Zhang Xiaogang (whose works broke the $10 million mark in 2011 and still sell well into the millions of dollars), Zeng Fanzhi (who reached $9.7 million in 2008), and others continue to climb in tandem with the broader global auction market and gradually close the gap with their Western counterparts.

Jing Daily 

Federal authorities declined to comment on the decision not to charge Ms. Rosales with anything related to the sale of counterfeits. But the complaint they filed discussed in some detail their reasons for believing them to be fake and focused on holes in her accounts of how she had obtained them from two collectors. The first collector did not exist, investigators said, and the second denied ever owning the paintings in an interview with the F.B.I. In addition, authorities said that much of the money Ms. Rosales received as the broker in the sale should have been turned over to a collector, if one existed, but instead was largely kept by her.

In presenting their charges on Tuesday, the authorities outlined the details of an international scheme they said clearly showed Ms. Rosales’s efforts to profit from counterfeiting.

In all, they say, she sold about 63 works to two prominent art dealers in New York between 1994 and 2008. But the case focused on 2006 to 2008 when investigators found irregularities in her tax filings, and 2007 to 2011, when they say she kept undisclosed foreign bank accounts.

Dealer at Center of Art Scandal Arrested on Charges of Tax Evasion (New York Times)

NADA NY provided a great presentation this year, with sun beaming down on the laid back and airy Pier 36. The layout of the fair was flawless, easy to navigate and each booth had great space. There was just enough galleries to enjoy the show without the dreaded “fair fatigue”.  The organizers really hit the nail on the head regarding space with this years installation in NYC, and some of the galleries really came to play ball with high class presentations.

Patricia Low Contemporary of Gstaad had an outstanding presentation at NADA NY this year. A.R. Penck formed contextual basis for the show, while Jannis Varelas and Sebastain Hammwöhner responded to his work flawlessly in this beautiful presentation. Curator for Patricia Low Gallery, Max Henry commented on the links between the artists in the show:

“Through pictographic symbols the artists communicate a fundamental aspect of the human endeavor.

The link to the primitive past in the Modern technological age of the military industrial complex (Penck);The body and the transcultural aspects of gender, clothing, and accessories as talisman/accoutrements (Varelas); And the recycling of images (virtual, printed etc.) from immaterial forms into tactile anthropological representations (Hammwöhner).”

After speaking with Henry, it was clear to see his depth of knowledge for each artist and his reasoning behind the collection for NADA NY. Sophisticated in presentation, I forgot I was at an art fair while sitting in this booth speaking with the gallerist and curator

Canadian Shawn Kuruneru had work on show at Ribordy Contemporary. Reverting to drawing at its basics, Kuruneru uses pen, ink and acrylic to explore mark making by filling the page with dots. Uncertainty and chance play a key role in Kuruneru’s minimalist practice. His work is concerned with the idea of origins. The artist sees instinct as intrinsic to the drawing process.

Volker Hueller’s large mixed-media canvases explore an abstracted sense of portraiture at one of my favourite New York galleries, Eleven Rivington. Channeling early 20^th century modernism, Hueller’s ‘Picassoesque’ dark works charm the viewer through mystery. Nana Asfour of Time Out New York comments on the black paintings in the series: “Those canvases were created during a residency in Washington, Connecticut, and the rolling hills of Litchfield County left their stamp, quite literally. Bugs, sticks and other random objects imbedded into the compositions attest to the verdant surroundings.”

In contrast to the claims made by ROSALES, the investigation has revealed that:

• experts in the fields of art, art history, and materials science have concluded that at least several of the paintings sold by her are counterfeit;
• the Purported Swiss Client on whose behalf she claimed to sell most of the paintings to the Manhattan galleries never existed;
• the Purported Spanish collector on whose behalf she claimed to sell the remainder of the paintings to the Manhattan galleries never owned the paintings; and
• instead of passing along a substantial portion of the proceeds of the sale of the various paintings, she kept all or almost all of the proceeds, and transferred substantial portions to an account maintained by her then-boyfriend.

ROSALES filed tax returns that falsely claimed she had not kept all, or almost all of the proceeds from the sale of the purported clients’ paintings, when, in fact, she had. Further, there was no Swiss client and no Spanish collector. In total, she failed to report the receipt of at least $12.5 million of income for the years 2006 through 2008.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Charges Art Dealer With Hiding Millions Of Dollars In Income From Fraudulent Sales Of Artwork(Manhattan US Attorney)

El Anatsui, ($600-800k) $1.179m

With the success of Julie Mehretu and El Anatsui at last week’s sales in New York, African art is getting more attention. Tomorrow Bonhams will hold sales of contemporary African art in London while Artnet piggybacks with online sales of its own, as Colin Gleadell points out:

The Bonhams sale is estimated at £500,000 to £800,000. Artnet’s sale is much smaller, but valued at £378,000 to £618,000. Less traditional in content, it includes works by international stars Chris Ofili and the US-based Wangechi Mutu. Its London co-ordinator is Ben Hanly, formerly a specialist in contemporary art at Lyon & Turnbull in Scotland.

Hanly says: “The decision to hold the African sale was made because contemporary African art is one of the most exciting emerging markets at the moment. In the past five years, artists such as El Anatsui, Wangechi Mutu, Julie Mehretu and Yinka Shonibare have moved into the top tier of international contemporary artists.”

Sale total  R47 308 775 , 76.09% lot sell-through rate

1. Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, Extensive Landscape, Lydenburg, Northern Drakensberg Beyond (R5 000 000 – 7 000 000) 5 911 360
2. Cecil Edwin Frans Skotnes, The Last Supper (R300 000 – 400 000) 1,818,880
3. William Joseph Kentridge, Female Nude (R1 000 000 – 1 500 000) 1 591 520
4. William Joseph Kentridge (R1 200 000 – 1 600 000) 1,250,480
5. Irma Stern, Proteas (R1 000 000 – 1 500 000) 1,136,800
6. Vladimir Griegorovich Tretchikoff, Alicia Markova “The Dying Swan” (R800 000 – 1 200 000) 1,079,960
7. Alexis Preller, Gold Primavera (R600 000 – 900 000) 966,280
8. Vladimir Griegorovich Tretchikoff, Balinese Girl (R700 000 – 900 000) 966 280
9. Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, Extensive Landscape, Eastern Freestate (R600 000 – 900 000) 852 600
10. Alexis Preller, Choros (R600 000 – 900 000) 852,600

www.straussart.co.za

• Jean-Paul Riopelle’s Composition, which sold for $1,228,500 (estimate $600,000 to $800,000); eight other works by Riopelle were personally consigned by the artist’s mistress Belle Burke. These works were given to Burke by the artist during their relationship. The Belle Burke collection drew an impressive total of $444,600.

• Emily Carr’s Old Timer which sold for $936,000 (estimate $400,000 to $600,000)
• Emily Carr, Cape Mudge Totem Poles (estimate: $150,000 – $250,000), which sold for $380,250
• 31 works by influential Canadian artists consigned by The Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal (PSBGM) Cultural Heritage Foundation had a combined total of $1.6 million in sales. A.Y. Jackson led the collection with his A Quebec Village (Winter, Saint-Fidèle) selling for $585,000 (estimate $500,000 – $700,000) and his Saint-Simeon, Lower St. Lawrence selling for $152,100 (estimate $90,000 to $120,000). Thoreau MacDonald’s Canadian Geese sold for $21,060 (estimate $10,000 to $15,000), breaking the record for the artist.
• Gordon Appelbe Smith was represented with five works. His Red Beach was the catalogue front cover feature this year and sold for a remarkable $93,600 surpassing the $20,000 to $30,000 estimate.
• Five works by influential B.C. artist E.J. Hughes totaled $252,720 in sales, led by his Mt. Stephen which sold for $175,500.
• Quebec modern remains highly sought after, as demonstrated by Paul-Émile Borduas’ Sans Titre from his calligraphic series, which sold for $409,500 (estimate: $100,000 to $150,000), Jean-Philippe Dallaire’s Le fonctionnaire which sold for $ 70,200, and Marcelle Ferron’s Otsatot which sold for $81,900. All three of these works were consigned from a prominent Montreal family Estate.
• Lawren Harris such as the Pic Island, Lake Superior (sold for $234,000) and Lawren Stewart Harris’ Rainstorm, Northern Lake which sold for $187,200, more than doubling the low estimate (sold for $187,200), and Tom Thomson’s Mississagi (estimate: $80,000 – $120,000) which sold for $163,800.
• Marc-Aurèle Fortin’s Vue de St-Siméon, a rare large format oil painting, which sold for $672,750 (estimate $400,000 to $600,000). Additionally, all three of the David Milne works exceeded their high estimates, commanding a total of $277,975.

Heffel.com

 The average compound annual return on the repeat sales during these auctions was 10.4%. ‘This was a really strong set of sales,” says Moses. “They don’t get much stronger than this. Nor were there any really outsized returns that would skew the results.” […]

It’s also worth noting that repeat sales information was only available for 130 or 12% of the total number of lots offered in these auctions. To put that in perspective, a total of 241 art works or 22% of the lots offered in these sales didn’t sell at all.

Of course, there’s s difference between the overall return and the rate of return as illustrated by the lot that had the highest percentage return but didn’t account for much in the way of money:

The art work that generated the best compound annual return for its owner of 64% was Alexander Calder’s work on paper, Cap d’Antibes, which also sold during Christie’s day sale last week. That was purchased in September 2011 at Sotheby’s for $53,000, above the estimate of $25,000 to $30,000. It sold again at Christie’s last week for $111,000, plus buyer’s premium, again way over the estimate.

Moses says that the fact that the Calder sold for way over its high estimate twice in a row is very unusual. “Our data shows that the higher you pay above the estimate, the more likely you are to make lower returns,” he says. […] According to Moses, sellers of art works during the New York’s contemporary sales last week that had spent over $1 million on those purchases initially achieved a lower return. “The average compound annual return for works with a purchase price of greater than $1 million was 7.1%, while for those with a purchase prices of less than $1 million it was 10.9%. Again, masterpieces under perform,” says Moses.

Basquiat, Pollock, Lichtenstein: Are Trophy Art Works Good Investments? (Forbes)

Fund manager Mark B. Spiegel was doing a little thinking about the art market while strolling the Met yesterday. What’s interesting about Spiegel’s rumination is that he started from the knee jerk assumption that the art market is a bubble. And although there remains no fundamental value undergirding the market, Spiegel sees a fair amount of money driving art forward. Just look at these calculations:

According to Forbes, the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires is over $5 trillion. Even if one were to assume that one must be a billionaire to spend $25 million or more on a painting (thereby eliminating all of those worth in the hundreds of millions) and if one were to further assume that billionaires were– on average– willing to devote no more than 20% of their net worth to fine art, that’s still $1 trillion worth of combined fine-art buying power. (Remember, someone worth a billion dollars who spends a combined $200 million on an intercontinental jet, a 175′ yacht and three incredible houses still has over 80% of his wealth untouched, while someone worth $2 billion still has 90%.) So with $1 trillion of “billionaire art buying power” out there, that’s enough money to purchase 40,000 (!) paintings at $25 million each, while last year only around 20 were auctioned at that price or higher.

Is The Art Market A Bubble That’s About To Burst? Maybe Not. (Seeking Alpha)

Richard Dorment levels some strong charges in The New York Review of Books and warns that a showdown may be coming between the Andy Warhol Foundation and its insurance company over the costs of defending the work of the Warhol Authentication Board. The case, Dorment says, will reveal papers and depositions that cast doubt upon the operations of the formerly secret workings of the authentication board:

They also provide documentary evidence that on several occasions the board authenticated works that it had already declared to be fakes. In one electrifying moment during his deposition, on July 7, 2010, [Vincent] Fremont admitted that on at least one occasion he sold as authentic Warhols paintings that the estate of Andy Warhol had confiscated from the owner on the grounds that they were not the work of Andy Warhol. He also admitted that the authentication board on which he sits decided that the same body of work had been created under what one member called false pretenses. What made the sales legitimate, he said, was that the authentication board later declared the paintings to be genuine after all.

Andy Warhol and His Foundation: The Questions (New York Review of Books)

This ambitious but controversial attempt to create the world’s first “stock exchange for art” ended in liquidation in the Luxembourg courts at the end of last year. The project, which at one point employed 18 people, aimed to turn art into a fungible asset by splitting it into “certificates”, which could then be traded on an exchange. Most of the funding came from an Israeli source, and Deloitte Luxembourg, which has an active art and finance service, helped to promote it but without investing in it. The idea was that the owner of a work of art would put it into SplitArt, which would convert it into “certificates” tradable on an online multinational trading facility. But the project ran aground after a split (!) between investors about its direction. One minority investor said: “The majority wanted to build an IT platform and stock exchange to make money, but the minority saw the project as a way of creating a new transparent, liquid, efficient market.”

 The Art Market: Bid to Save the Planet (Financial Times)

Helly Nahmad & Leo DiCaprio

The New York Times continues to dine out on the Helly Nahmad gambling case by running its second page-one story in a week on art and money laundering. Though, as the section below admits, art has nothing to do with the gambling case:

But the case, in which investigators listened to Mr. Nahmad’s cellphone conversations over a period of months, also raises questions about how he conducted himself as an art dealer. In one conversation he speaks of using the family’s art business as a cover to move around illicit money, advising a woman named Lisa to wire $150,000 to the bank account of his father, David.

“Sometimes a bank needs a justification for a wire, right?” Mr. Nahmad said, according to a government account of the conversation, in March 2012. “We can just say, Oh, you are buying a painting. If they need justification, you know what I mean? You just be like, Oh yeah, I bought a, you know, Picasso drawing or something.”

It is unclear whether that transaction took place, and no charges related to the use of the business to launder money are contained in the indictment. The charges describe two related gambling networks — one led by Mr. Nahmad — that laundered tens of millions of dollars through shell companies in Cyprus; legitimate hedge funds and real estate assets in the United States; a car-repair shop in Brooklyn; and even a Bronx plumbing company that had been taken over by the gambling ring as payment for a bettor’s losses.

Case Casts Harsh Light on Family Art Business (NYTimes)

Back for its second year on Randall’s Island, British export Frieze NY delivered some great booths this year. Easy to navigate and enriched with beautiful natural light, the fair is earning its stripes with New Yorkers and visitors alike. Yes, the bus ride out felt a little like a bumpy safari ride, but who cares when at the end you see Paul McCarthy’s giant balloon dog eagerly waiting to welcome you to the temporary home of galleries from around the globe?

Paul Kasmin had some great James Nares works on show at Frieze, a teasing taster of the “Road Paint” exhibition by Nares at the gallery right now (ending June 22^nd 2013.) Though different in approach and form, something about the paintings is reminiscent of Nares brushstroke paintings. Tiny glass spheres released in the painting process create a subtle and glorious iridescent effect. According to the press release:

“These works continue the artist’s ongoing kinetic investigations—exploring the form, direction, rhythm, and repetition of objects in motion. The result of a completely new technique developed by Nares exclusively for this exhibition, this unique practice seeks to capture movement’s own moment of creation, its own primal genesis.”

Casey Kaplan had a wonderful solo presentation of German artist Julia Schmidt. Her abstractions are inspired by the everyday (the internet, print media, phone photography etc.) and repurposed with new meaning. Upon closer inspection the works appear more tangible. What’s interesting about the work is the colour palette chosen by the artist. According to Kaplan gallery:

“This body of work marks a new exploration of color, favoring an artificial palette that in itself becomes a referent, whether to the newsprint of the international edition of The Financial Times or cheaply produced colored copyshop paper. These lurid washes, which at times seem as equally luminous as they are poisonous, work not only to deconstruct her source images, but to rebuild them with new contents.”

David Zwirner stunned the audience once again with a fabulous presentation of works by Thomas Ruff. Exploring a variety of themes, the artist employs a range of techniques examining the structures of photography. Ruff confronts traditional conventions of photographic representation and pushes them past traditional finish lines. According to Aperture Magazine: Turning away from straight photography in the mid-1990s, “Ruff has taken up a study of the photogram, updating the form for the digital era by creating his works in a 3-D digital studio environment and outputting the resulting images in the large scale he tends to favour.” For an excellent interview with the artist in Aperature, click HERE.

Société Gallery of Berlin had a fantastic booth showing Sean Raspet and Timur Si-Qin. Washington-born Brooklyn-based Raspet injects acrylic paint into plexiglass cubes filled with hair gel. In other instances of Raspet’s work, he encases objects in cubes of hair gel, suspending the object in time and space.

Tinur Si-Qin’s process involved melting yoga mats onto large aluminum plates, changing the form and colour organically. Both artists work well together in the space and it was clear that the gallery put time and thought into creating a conversation between the artists they presented.

Lisson Gallery had a particularly strong show this year. Favorites included three Pedro Reyes musical sculptures adorning one wall of the booth – musical instruments created from remnants of decommissioned weapons. Mexican born Reyes juxtaposes the dangerous with the lyrical in these darkly beautiful and haunting sculptures. The weapons were seized from Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. In 2010, the city had a murder rate of 230 killings to every 100,000 inhabitants. In an article in Mail Online, Reyes describes his work: ‘It occurred to me to make musical instruments, because music is the opposite of weapons,’ Reyes said. ‘This exercise of transformation we see with the guns, is what we would like to see in society.’

Here’s what GalleristNY’s Dan Duray heard at the press conference:

“It’s a curious thing, really,” Mr. Pylkkänen said at the press conference. “As the auctioneer I found myself wondering how many clients we could have sold pictures to for over $20 million tonight. That’s the thought that was going through my mind as they were bidding on the Licthenstein, the Basquiat. We are in a new era of the art market.”

Katya Kazakina got this bit of color:

“You have a lot of foreign money, a lot of hedge-fund money,” said Miami collector Martin Margulies after he exited the packed salesroom. “Stocks could go down 50 percent. If this goes down, it will eventually go back up. These are historical pieces.”

Kelly Crow buttonholed one market player:

Sandy Rower, a New York collector—and Alexander Calder’s grandson—said buyers feel good about the upward trajectory of art values overall now. “I see a consistent market that’s willing to buy good and great things,” Mr. Rower said, adding, “Sometimes they only want the great things.”

And numerous reporters, including Kazakina, got a version of this quote from the buyer of Lichtenstein:

“I always saw it in the textbooks,” Graff said, adding that it was one of his priciest purchases. “I’ve got a big birthday coming up and I bought it for my birthday.”

It wasn’t all billionaire collectors, though. Judd Tully caught up with the buyer of a Basquiat who is new to Contemporary art but not collecting and was willing to pay a princely sum for a work on paper:

Another Basquiat, this one a work on paper, “Furious Man,” also made a huge sum, selling toJerry Lauren for $5,723,750 (est. $1-1.5 million). It last sold at Sotheby’s New York in May 2001 for $302,750. Here, it was one of the standout pieces from the Andy Williams collection.

“I’m a folk art collector,” said Lauren, as he exited the heaving, standing-room-only salesroom, “and I can identify with this because it’s American street folk art.” Lauren, who bid from a last row seat in the salesroom, is the creative head of men’s fashion at Ralph Lauren (no relation). He explained that he collects Bill Traylor, a storied folk artist, as well as American weathervanes, stoneware, and “very rare Americana.” Needless to say, it is his first Basquiat.

Christie’s Scores $495 M. at Postwar Sale, Highest Auction Total Ever, With 12 Artist Records (GalleristNY)

Basquiat, Pollock Lead Christie’s $495 Million Record (Bloomberg)

Giddy Highs for Contemporary Art in Historic Sale (Christie’s)

Christie’s Rakes In $495 Million — the Highest Total for Any Art Auction, Ever (Artinfo)