Modern Art Obsession

Christies Contemporary Sale Goes Very Well!

So the much worried about anticipated Christies Post War and Contemporary Art sale went very well last night.   Oh..and in case you were wondering... that enormous rush of air everyone in NYC heard last night..was the huge sy-of-relief being let out by every bloated contemporary art dealer in Chelsea.

So at $33,641,000, Lucian Freud now rules now the roost.. a pretty average Rothko sold for over $50 million,  crazy oblivious American collectors bought 70% of the lots last night, and Sotheby's stock is now up 4% this morning.  What Gloom and Doom..?? Pish-posh! The contemporary art world is all fine and dandy...full speed ahead!  I knew that Kool Aid tasted great.

(Photo #1, Mark Rothko, No 15, 1952, 91 3/8 x 80 inches, oil on canvas)

Well... With $348.3 Million in sales just last night just at Christies.. Let the good times Roll!

Here's some more details by Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff of Bloomberg news.
     May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Lucian Freud, the 85-year-old flesh-
and-flab-loving British painter, became the world's priciest
living artist at auction last night when his graceful portrait of
a 280-pound civil servant named Sue fetched $33.6 million at
Christie's International in New York.
     The 1995 Freud was one of eight records smashed in an
exuberant sale featuring the male clique of auction stars that
includes Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Richard Prince. Tom
Wesselmann, Prince, Sam Francis and Adolph Gottlieb also fetched
new highs.
     The 57-lot sale tallied $348.3 million, the second-highest
total for the category and closer to the top of the $282 million-
to-$398.6 million presale range. Just three lots didn't sell and
Americans took home 70 percent of works sold. It was as if buyers
were oblivious to talk of recession and remnants of the credit
crisis in the world outside the Rockefeller Center salesroom.
     ``Defying gravity tonight,'' said billionaire Eli Broad as
he stepped out of the salesroom, accompanied by wife Edye, and
Joanne Heyler, director of the Broad Art Foundation.
     The top lot was a 1952 Mark Rothko painting, with red bands
on a yolk-yellow background, that fetched $50.4 million.
Estimated to sell for about $40 million, it rode the Rothko wave
that began a year ago, when David Rockefeller sold a pink-and-
yellow canvas for a record $72.8 million at Sotheby's.

                         Lanky, Tanned

     Real estate developer Aby Rosen, lanky plastics magnate
Stefan T. Edlis, Michael Ovitz and perennially tanned fashion
designer Valentino Garavani were spotted in the crowd.
     ``The very important went very high,'' said Valentino, after
the sale.
     Christie's didn't miss any marketing angles. The firm's
billionaire owner Francois Pinault hosted a dinner Monday night
honoring Jeff Koons. In November, Koons's 3,500-pound, hot-pink,
stainless-steel ``Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold)'' sold for $23.6
million at Sotheby's New York, establishing him at the time as
the priciest living artist at auction.
     Tapping the boom market for contemporary art, the auction
house offered a famous mid-century home, the Richard Neutra-
designed ``Kaufmann House'' at the sale. The five-bedroom house
in Palm Springs, California, fetched $16.8 million, near the low
end of $15 million-to-$25 million estimate.
     Christie's sale was the first postwar and contemporary
auction of the week. Sotheby's auction, starring a Bacon triptych
expected to fetch about $70 million, is tonight. Phillips de Pury
& Co. follows on May 15.

                         Twisted Portraits

     Enviable returns studded the sale. Bacon's 1976 ``Three
Studies for Self-Portrait'' fetched $28 million. In 1999, the
somber twisted portraits sold for $2.9 million at Christie's in
London and six years later made $5.2 million in New York.
     Prince's campy ``Nurse'' series paintings went for less than
$100,000 five years ago. Last night, ``Man-Crazy Nurse #2'' went
for $7.4 million. The seller was television producer and MoMA
trustee Douglas S. Cramer. Hedge fund titans Steven Cohen and
Daniel Loeb are among Prince's devotees.
     ``I would've expected a correction by now,'' said Broad.
``It's just a question of when.''

                         `Wild One'

     Warhol dominated the field with eight lots. A spare black
1966 silkscreen ``Double Marlon,'' using a film still from Marlon
Brando's bad-boy ``Wild One'' film, fetched $32.5 million, more
than a $30 million estimate. In 1992, the work sold for $935,000
at Sotheby's in New York.
     San Francisco film producer and punk rocker Henry S.
Rosenthal sold a 1962 Warhol ``Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper
Pot),'' which he said his father bought in 1962 for a few hundred
dollars. For the last 30 years, the painting has hung in
Rosenthal's warehouse in San Francisco's skid row. Last night, it
fetched $7.1 million.
     ``It was a difficult decision to sell,'' said Rosenthal, 53.
``But as the painting became absurdly valuable, it became more
nerve-wracking to keep it.''
     Gerhard Richter's 1987 riff on abstraction, the yellow, blue
and red ``Abstraktes Bild (625)'' sold for $14.6 million. The 13-
foot-wide canvas fetched $3.4 million five years ago at
Christie's in New York.
     ``There is no recession in the art market,'' said Norman Rau,
collector and president of Sandusky Radio. ``I wish traditional
media was this good.''
     Last week, Christie's and Sotheby's held impressionist and
modern art auctions. Overall the two weeks of sales were
projected to total up to $1.8 billion.
     Sale prices include a buyer's commission of 25 percent of
the hammer price up to $20,000, 20 percent of the price from
$20,000 to $500,000, and 12 percent above $500,000. Estimates do
not include commissions.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping by Lucian Freud... the poster child for Art Excess ?

So.. the Spring Contemporary Auctions are about to begin.. and the biggest question in what's left of MAO's mind.. is : Will "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping" by Lucian Freud...become the new poster child for Art Excess in 2008 ?

Tonight at 8pm.. we will know the answer! Christies Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale. We checked out the painting first hand.. It's big and it's beautiful..and it's nothing but flesh!

Lot 37, Lucian Freud (b. 1922)
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping
oil on canvas
59 5/8 x 86¼ in. (151.3 x 219 cm.)
Painted in 1995

This heavyweight painting with a huge pre-sale estimate of $25,000,000 to $35,000,000, has the potential to break the all time record for the highest price ever paid at auction for a living artist's work, crushing the Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart which currently holds the insane record at $23,500,000. Now that's PHAT!

Go Lucian go!

Here's a story in the Telegraph with some more details about this curvaceous painting.

Christies Impressionist Auction Total falls Below the Low end of the range

It's HAMMER Time in NYC my little MOA-ettes!

Sadly.. last night Christies first attempt didn't do so well with their big Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale.

Of the significantly pair back auction of only 58 Lots.. 14 failed to find a buyer. Ouch! A 24% failure rate! Not good!

Several Picasso's, a Monet, a Matisse, and even a  Gauguin (pre-sale est $4 to $6 million) which was stated in the catalog as "The appearance of Gauguin's Le rêve, moe moea in this sale is a most fortuitous event." all went unsold.

One of the only successful lots of the auction was the amazing 8+ feet tall, Alberto Giacometti, Grande femme debout II sculpture.. which sold for a record $27,481,000. Nice!!

So.. maybe Impressionist art is just way out of favor with the billionaire jet set. MAO remembers the last round of super high end impressionist and modern sales last fall in London which also failed to meet expectations... but the following Contemporary Art auctions still managed to go reasonably well.

I feel a cold breeze... but we shall see next week!!

Here's some additional commentary from Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff at Bloomberg news..

    May 7 (Bloomberg) -- Monet and Rodin failed to prevent
Christie's International from missing its low estimate for an
evening impressionist and modern art auction for the first time
in four years.
     Last night's sale in New York totaled $277.3 million as 14
of the 58 lots failed to find buyers. The auction had been
projected to tally $287 million to $405 million. Europeans,
taking advantage of a weaker dollar, bought more than half the
lots, while U.S. buyers took 32 percent, compared with almost
half at the previous impressionist sale in November.
     The result suggests that at least $318 billion of credit
losses and writedowns at banks, a slump in the U.S. currency and
a dip in global equity markets may have slowed the international
art market.
     ``It's a rational market that is slightly more rational
than the last go-around,'' said John Good, a director of
Gagosian Gallery.
     Christie's said last night's total was still its third-
highest for the category. The top lot was a $41.5 million
cerulean blue painting by Claude Monet, showing an iron railway
bridge over the Seine, near Paris. Christie's estimated that
``Le Pont du Chemin de Fer a Argenteuil'' would fetch about $40
million. An anonymous phone bidder set a record for the artist,
outspending the previous high set last year by about $5 million.
     The seller was the Nahmad art-dealing family, which bought
the work for $12.4 million at Christie's in 1988.

                         Monet Lilies

     ``I'm very happy,'' patriarch David Nahmad said, standing
in the crowded aisle of the Rockefeller Center salesroom after
the auction. He was outbid for the evening's second-priciest
Monet, the 1908 ``Nympheas,'' which fetched $11.7 million.
     The evening's rejects included a garishly colored Venetian
vista by Monet, estimated at up to $12 million; a tepid Van Gogh
landscape, with a high estimate of $16 million; and a portrait
of a chubby nude maiden by Renoir with a $5 million to $7
million range.
     A dearth of museum-quality impressionist and modern
paintings shifted the focus to sculpture, which accounted for 3
of the top 10 lots.
     Alberto Giacometti's 1960 ``Grand Femme Debout II,'' a 9-
foot-tall bronze of a woman, fetched an artist record $27.5
million, well above the $18 million estimate. The winning bidder
was Gagosian Gallery, which declined to comment on the purchase.
The artwork was one of five abstract forms in plaster and bronze
by postwar Swiss sculptor Giacometti. Sotheby's offers another
six Giacomettis tonight.

                         Moss-Waisted

     ``Grand Femme'' is an attenuated female figure, with a tiny
Kate Moss-like waist and stick-like arms. It was originally a
commission for Chase Manhattan Bank's Wall Street headquarters.
Giacometti didn't visit the site, or New York, and the work was
never installed there.
     French sculptor Auguste Rodin also smashed records with his
1897 bronze ``Eve,'' estimated to sell for $9 million to $12
million. It fetched $19 million.
     The anonymous seller acquired the sculpture for $4.8
million at Christie's in New York in 1999 and displayed the work
outdoors. Eve has muscular crossed arms and her graceful head is
tucked in shame.
     Sale prices include a buyer's commission of 25 percent of
the hammer price up to $20,000, 20 percent of the price from
$20,000 to $500,000 and 12 percent above $500,000. Estimates do
not include commissions.
     Christie's sold $395 million of impressionist and modern
art at its November sale in New York. The dollar is down more
than 12 percent against the euro in the past year and reached a
record low of $1.6019 per euro on April 22.

     (Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff write on the arts for
Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are their own.)

Natasha Kissell, Artist Interview - Part 2

Natasha Kissell, Artist interview Part 2.  For those who didn't read part 1..you can go here and check out.. Natasha Kissell Interview Part 1.

So before we continue.. here's a brief description we found about one of Natasha's recent paintings.. Pink Canyons.. (Photo #1, Natasha Kissell, Pink Canyons, 2008, 48" x 42", oil on canvas)

PINK CANYONS transports Mies Van Der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion to an Arizona canyon calling to mind Monica Ramirez-Montegut’s comments in the current Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art show 'Painting The Glass House', "Perhaps for Kissell, only nature is the true companion and owner of modern architecture".

Instead of Harrap's peopled places, the psycho-geography comes in the form of the landscapes that the buildings exist in creating a double utopia, the two in conversation with each other. The usual crowds of tourists that would swarm around Van Der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion are emptied out, in a desire to allow the building to exist in tranquility matched only by the sun gently going down in the Arizona outback. This also creates a surreal juxtaposition, two far away places united in one canvas.

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MAO Q6.. So your husband Peter Harrap, is also a successful painter.. has he been a huge influence on your work? Both of your paintings are going to be in the new show together..Why?  Do you work closely together.. or far apart? Are you guys co-dependent artists? What other artists would you say have been the biggest influence on you?

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NK : We work back to back. Furniture flies, we shout and out of the creative furnace, new ideas come. We challenge each other and point out weak areas. I don't think I would be able to accept this from anyone else, or rather they wouldn't accept the shouting match that would follow! We are independent artists but often arrive at ideas together so it is interesting to show together. There is also the difference in figure/non figure compositions making the works create a dialog that is interesting.

.

MAO Q7.. In your new work as well as your last show, there were no people. For the most part, everything in your paintings are always very neat and in an unusually orderly setting.. At most there's a bird or a wolf in your paintings.. Why? Are you making a specific political statement, or do you have a specific social message you want to express?

.

NK :  I do believe I’m making a kind of political statement, if not in your face. I am influenced by the Siennese painters of the 14th and 15th centuries. Their idea of the Republic was tantamount dictating their perspective on the cities they depicted. Because everyone had a say in the way the city was run, there is a democracy of viewpoint, not the single view point of power, of the lord of the manor, the leader or the war lord, but the multiple perspective of the collective. This is why I combine many perspectives in one picture. The neatness comes I guess because it is more the idea of place, the concept of holding an ideal, a utopia in mind than the loved experience. I use not just one utopia but two - that of the beauty of nature, and also that of the beauty and perfection of design, hence the modernist architecture, not the modernism of 60's high rises but the modernism of exquisite design where architects compete with the natural world to create something spectacular.

(photo #2 Natasha Kissell, Minimalist with Marsh Marigold, 2008, 30" x 40", oil on canvas)

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MAO Q8.. So you guys don't live in NYC (the center of the Art World Universe). Do you spend much time going to London museums, or local galleries? How do you think living in the trendy Notting Hill has influenced your painting?

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NK :  If I could live in New York I would be there in a shot! I love the energy of it. London's not so bad though, also full of buzz, and allows me to remain well connected with the contemporary art world which is becoming increasingly international. You’re more likely to see an English artist exhibit in Berlin say than London, and London’s full of Romanian/Russian/etc. so you really get to key into the international perspective. Go very regularly to the museums, once a week to look and study old and new. In Notting Hill we work next door to the playwright Harold Pinter, great modernist writer and have others like the fashion design Paul Smith live a couple of doors down, a really buzzy place full of people who have done really interesting stuff with their lives. Also Lucien Freud is a neighbor, he once asked me to sit for him, but I couldn't’t do the commitment of a whole year of giving up painting to pose for him every day.

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MAO Q9... Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as the "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."[1] A more straightforward definition is "a slightly stuffy term that's been applied to a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities.

Where did you find this word "Psychogeography"? And why did you choose this as the title for your new show?

.

NK :  Both Peter and I were using places as representations of an internal, emotional place. Painting is about reflecting our experience of living in the world, how we imprint our own individual identities on the places in which we find ourselves. I guess as a painter you try and stamp this individuality in an act of will, that I exist and I matter, however misguided this may be. Peter’s spaces may be more urban and mine more wildernesses, but each is huge and uncontrollable in its own way. This is what leads us to try and control our little bit of world allotted to us. We’re not interested in ownership, one response to the problem of being “small” in the world, but more interested in this act of the will and how it drives us, and the expressions this takes.

.

(Photo #3, Natasha Kissell, In the Treetops, 2008, 48" x 42", oil on canvas)

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MAO Q10.. When you're not painting.. what's your favorite thing to do? What do you do for fun?

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NK :  Breathe! Fresh air is always refreshing after a day stuck in the fumes of oil paint. Love films, we’re addicts, love the stories which I guess we both try and infuse in our work. People have said my work is quite filmic. Otherwise hang out in Soho bars, haunts of the art world and overdose on cigarettes and alcohol, escape from the intensity of our thoughts. A little holiday away from our selves!

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Natasha's show opens this Thursday night,

Opening: Thursday, May 8th 6:30-8:30pm at the Gallery 10G, located at 222 East 19th Street #10G between 2nd/3rd Avenues. MAO of course will be there!

FYI... We think all the paintings in Part 2 of this interview will be in the new show (and available)..

Fortunately for Natasha...sadly for us art collectors.. we've been just told that all the paintings in Part 1 of this interview have already been sold/spoken for. Like who says the art market is crashing??? NOT MAO...now will someone please pass the Kool-Aid!

Congrats Natasha !

Artist interview with British Painter Natasha Kissell

Artist Interview with British Painter Natasha Kissell.

So it's been just over a year since we first saw the work of painter Natasha Kissell at the Scope'07 NY Art Fair.

And while we have to first confess admit..  we're generally totally turned off by almost all the current figurative and photorealistic paintings..

But, there was just something about Natasha's work that caught our attention.

So, a lot has been happening for Natasha Kissell..

Including a show at the Haunch of Venison's founding director's new gallery, Eleven Gallery in London..

and her work was recently included in Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture at Connecticut's Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. The Aldrich show was co-curated by Jessica Hough, and Monica Ramirez-Montagut.

(Photo #1, Natasha Kissell, The Vertical Hour, 2008, 60 x 66, Oil on canvas)

So before her new show opens up this week at the 10G Gallery in NYC.. we thought we'd check in with Natasha, and see how things were going. Here's the first part, of a 2 part artist interview..

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MAO Q1. Why did you decide to become an artist?

NK : I felt the need to express my innermost thoughts and unable to do this through other means, the thing that came most naturally to me was scribbling with felt tips, crayons whatever I could get my hands on as a child. It all took off from there.

(Photo #2, Bubble Rock, 2006, 48 x 48, Oil on canvas)

MAO Q2. Painting... ? So, with such a huge expansion of the contemporary art world into new media, why choose did you choose the "traditional" brush, oil, and canvas ?

NK : It's like a kind of alchemy, something happens when you play around with paint. You start off with your ideas, but then something completely different happens as the materials respond to your touch and you arrive at a completely different destination. This tactile quality leads to surprises which keep the whole process fresh and unlimited, taking me out of what I know and think to other thoughts and ideas. For example, I may be painting a mountain as an expression of hugeness of space, but this may be done in an ethereal wispy way or it could be concrete and heavy, both would be saying different things.

MAO Q3. Would you describe your paintings as photo-realistic or even figurative? What style would you most strongly classify your paintings? And which artists would you most like to see your art work hung next to in a museum, or along side in an art text book?

NK : Magical Realism. Don’t like photo painting as such, being limited by the photographic source material and deconstructing it, about flatness and the lie that manipulates us. Realism can be more real than the world outside, more intense in feeling and alive. The magical element is my desire to transcend the physical reality of the everyday and represent the things we can't see. In this sense I love Caspar David Friedrich. His work is so understated in scale, working sometimes on quite small canvases, but always conveying a sense of something bigger and loftier, a huge expanse of Germanic mountain ranges and a single tree standing solitary like the human presence. Of contemporary painters, I love Peter Doig in his daringness of colour and painterliness, not apologetic for being a painter but boldly exploiting every trick in the book in the whole range of mark making.

(Photo #3, Bibbidi Bobbidi Blue, 2007, 42 x 48, Oil on canvas)

MAO Q4.  Ever since photography, painters had the need to react to it. The Modernist movements in 20th-century painting has frequently been thought of as a reaction to the increasing possibilities of photography. Today, many contemporary painters get their inspiration from photographs.  Where do you get your inspiration from and why do you choose to make paintings that combine Modernistic architecture with idealist landscapes?

NK : Photography has definitely been a major influence from the early 20th century onwards, but the lens as a tool in painting has I would argue always been there. Take Caravaggio’s camera lucida, Cannalletto used one as well, Velasquez, all the great artists of the past, Vermeer have had tools to help them to translate the world out there, 3D and moving onto the 2d canvas. So in a sense photography is nothing new and certainly not a threat to the validity of painting as an artistic medium today. I use many ways of looking at the world, plein air as the old masters did, most recently on a trip to the Himalayas, Switzerland, all over in rain snow and sun, but also from photographs found in magazines, newspapers, and the web. Source material from films, even books (described images can sometimes etch themselves even stronger on the brain). So this with your internal vision, your drive of what you see in your mind’s eye combines with the real world to create new morphed images, combining fantasy and reality. Something utterly new and never seen before. This is what I hope.

Modernist architecture is a device I have found useful in adding to the long tradition of English landscape painting. Turner and Constable painted their cottages, ships, horse drawn carts, and faced with depicting nature you can go two ways, accept that everything that can be done has already been done, or try something new, to update and add to the tradition, to try and add your own personal vision. This is what I am trying to achieve.

MAO Q5... Which painting (or paintings) that you've made are you most proud of? Why?

NK : I don't have any favourites as such, each is given equal attention and labour. Having said that breakthrough paintings are always satisfying. When you take risks, and go places you haven’t been. So 'Deep and Dark and Beautiful' was an exciting venture into the gothic with the spooky car headlights which lead to a whole series of works exploring the darker side of the sublime.

(Photo #4,

Deep and Dark and Beautiful, 2006, 48" x 42", Oil on canvas)

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OK... be sure to stop by tomorrow for part 2.. of the MAO - Natasha Kissell Interview.

You can also see more of Natasha's work here.

Her show along with her husband, Peter Harrap's, show.. opens up this Thursday May 8th.. at the 10G Gallery

"PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY" Opening: Thursday, May 8th 6:30-8:30pm Gallery 10G is located at 222 East 19th Street #10G bet. 2nd/3rd Avenues
		Show Artists:
		NATASHA KISSELL, PETER HARRAP

Art Chicago - The Private Art Collection of Richard And Ellen Sandor

Possibly the best thing about going to Art Chicago this year for MAO, was the VIP program, and getting to see the Richard and Ellen Sandor Art Collection.

These events were mostly very well organized drinking events, but they also included several amazing collection visits.  By total luck.. MAO got to visit possibly the nations most impressive historic photography collection..at the Chicago gold coast home of Ellen and Richard Sandor. (Yes .. we know, it's hard to believe this collection is actually West of the Hudson River !)

Not only was the photography collection a total knock your socks off MAO WoW.. but Richard and Ellen could not have been more gracious hosts. These walls were filled to the brim with Cindy Sherman, Arbus, Curtis, Prince, Man Ray, Vik Muniz, Penn, Burke-White, Kertesz, Steichen..etc.. they have 2000+ images (and it's almost all on the walls..like how obsessive is that!).. you probably couldn't name an important photographer who wasn't well represented in the collection.

It was also amazing to see such bright, obsessive, and generous art collectors being so nice.. like how Non-New York City is that ??  Just, think.. rich, important collectors being nice to the little people... Who would have guessed it was possible? Only in Chicago! 

Ellen and Richard gave us a wonderfully coordinated tour of their impressive art collection which really brought all the obsessive details to life. Their love for collecting photography was totally infectious.

After hearing MAO's raves about our lucky collection visit.. One very resourceful member of the MAO fan club.. was nice enough to send us this PDF file of a Metropolitan Home article featuring Richard and Ellen Sander's photography Collection. But FYI..these photo's don't do the collection justice.. it's way more obsessive and impressive in person. Check it out...here...

Download MetroP_Home_SANDOR_collection.pdf

Our sincere thanks go out to Ellen and Richard Sandor.. you are a total inspiration to every crazy totally obsessive photo collector...You are now, MAO's photo collecting super heros.. and if you're ever in NYC, we would love to take you guys out to dinner to thank you.

ARTROPOLIS 2008....

ARTOPOLIS 2008... If they build it will anyone they come??

OK.. we're headed to Chicago tomorrow morning for a few days. We think MAO may possibly be the only silly obsessed New York Art collector to be able to say..we've gone to both Art Chicago in 2007 and 2008.

Do the big European art buyers know where Chicago even is? This could be very scary.

And from looking at the current Map of Art Chicago.. it's going to be very big. Is it possible to have too many galleries... not enough collectors at an Art Fair?

Anyway..we're looking forward to a work break, seeing some new art, meeting some nice mid-west types, and seeing the NEXT art fair.

Paul Evans and George Nakashima.. now Co-Kings of Modern American Furniture Design

The collecting world wakes up to the amazing furniture of Paul Evans.

For the last several years.. collectors not MAO have been falling all over themselves pushing up the prices of George Nakashima furniture.  Even books on Nakashima are hard to find.
And, if you've ever seen one of his natural wood tables.. you know, his furniture is amazing.

But the work of Nakashima's New Hope Pennsylvania contemporary, furniture maker Paul Evans..had never managed to get as much attention or demand the same sky high  from the design collecting elite. Well..that was until last weekend. 

This time, we saw jaws drop, tongues wagged, and auction records shattered..as collectors clamored to buy the several beautiful lots of Paul Evans bronze work for sale from the Sollo Rago Auction house this past weekend.

We've blogged about Paul Evens works before, but, some of these were the most amazing pieces of modern American furniture Dr. Quiz and MAO have ever seen. The bidding wars were intense insane cause MAO got outbid on everything!

We hope, this one Paul Evans cabinet (shown here),  went to the MAO collection a major American museum, because we've never seen a finer example.

Lot 100, Paul Evans, Sculpture Front Cabinet...Pre-Sale Estimate, $80,000 - $120,000... Actual Total Sale Price : $ 228,000.

(photo : PAUL EVANS Two-door vertical Sculpture Front cabinet, vibrantly painted with edges trimmed in 23K gold-leaf, the red-washed interior with three gold-leaf drawers and numerous compartments, 1972. (From the collection of Dorsey Reading.) Signed Paul Evans '72 D. 82" x 36" x 20" )

Now if only someone would publish a book on Paul Evans work..since we don't know of any yet!!

Painter, Chris Dorland's Show opens at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago

Chris Dorland, Simulations, at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

OK.. so apparently there is some great art happening west of the Hudson River as well!!

But you heard about this amazing painter here first...(Artist Interview Part I, and Part II)

Actually painter Chris Dorland, lives and works in Astoria.. so technically..the great art works get made in NYC..and just gets shipped west to Chicago!

So, MAO and his art posse got a lucky chance to preview the work before it go shipped west... a

nd we can honestly say..it's Mr. Dorland's best work to date. 

His new "Simulations" all look like photo collages that were created on photocopy and digital scanning machines.. but when you realize some of these are painstakingly hand painted canvases.. you start to understand the merits of these new works.

Here's part of the gallery press release...

Rhona Hoffman Gallery is pleased to present Simulations, an exhibition of new paintings and photo collages by New York-based artist Chris Dorland. This will be his first solo exhibition at the gallery.

Dorland’s work primarily references imagery from 1960’s and 1970’s architectural history books of stadiums, pavilions and other public buildings.  These grand scale utopian architectural projects, some of which never progressed beyond their planning stages, are hulking contradictions. Once futuristic and forward thinking, they often end up dilapidated and forgotten: wreckages of late Capitalism. Neither entirely realistic nor abstract, these works depict images which oscillate between the process of becoming and dissolving.

The distinct surface of Dorland’s work is created using a varied technique that involves scraping and rolling paint. Thus, his paintings simultaneously reveal and mask his process. The paintings in Simulations in particular reference the artist’s use of photocopied source material. Dorland has also willfully restrained his palette for this exhibition. Pairing violent and aggressive reds, greens and blues alongside deep inky blacks, Dorland’s paintings and collages call to mind Andy Warhol’s early silk-screens as well as the sparse digital glow found in many of Director Michael Mann’s neo-noir films. 

We can't wait to see what the show looks like in the gallery when we're at Art Chicago 2008 next week. (Photo, Chris Dorland, Untitled (Cathode 1), 2008, oil on linen,  32 x 48 inches)

OH..and FYI : In conjunction with the exhibition, Dorland has created a limited edition of hand silk-screened Xerox books, printed at Tiny Vices Books, which are available for sale at the gallery.

Congrats Chris! The show runs from April 18th to May 22nd.

Apparently there is Life in the NYC art world above 57th street!!

There's a Harlem Art Tour this weekend!! Like, Who knew??

So, For those clueless NYC art people who need a map and a tour guide to leave Chelsea.. MAO has found a program for you!!

So from what we can gather.. wisitors will be escorted by a tour guide to each gallery where they will participate in a 30 minute visit.

The ArtCrawl culminates in a 45 minute meet and greet at Schomburg Research Center where light refreshments will be served. Participants will pay $45 which will cover the guided bus tour, a gift bag, hors d'oeuvres and music. What a deal!! Here's the formal announcement...

ArtCrawl Harlem Sunday, April 13, 2008 Noon - 5PM LAST CHANCE TO BUY TICKETS TODAY! Harlem - the place to find different, distinct and cutting edge art by artists breaking new ground - experimental, mainstream, masters, emerging - its all here! Peggy, oil on canvas by Bradford Hill Courtest of Hamilton Landmark Gallery All Rights Reserved Sponsors Amor Cubano, Verizon, Gallery Guide, Canvas Paper and Stone Gallery, JTE Spirits, Capital One, Schomburg Research Center, and Taste of Harlem. Contact Us 212-866-7427 Bloom, mixed media on canvas by Charly Palmer All Rights Reserved Spend an afternoon guided bus tour of Harlem's fine art galleries including Heath Gallery, Canvas Paper and Stone Gallery, Essie Green Galleries, Tribal Spears Gallery, Hamilton Landmark Galleries, and Gallery M. End the day with a catered reception at the Schomburg Research Library with tote bags filled with goodies for guests. TICKETS MUST BE PURCHASED IN ADVANCE! BUY Tickets Today!

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Phillips Cancels tonights historic Diane Arbus Auction

In a surprise move, Phillips de Pury & Co. which had a huge historically important 100% Diane Arbus sale of the Hubert Museum work, scheduled for tonight... abruptly canceled it this morning.

They have announced the entire collection will be sold privately.  Hopefully, this means, that all of these amazing historic images will all go to a public institution..instead of being broken up and sold on the auction block....never to be seen together again. Maybe the Met.. which already owns the entire Diane Arbus Archive will buy it!

The canceled auction had consisted of 20 vintage Diane Arbus photographs, many which were thought to be totally unique. These photographs were of a Times Square private freak side show, known as the Hubert Museum.  These  photo's were a classic photographic treasure trove of unknown Arbus work.. and these were almost found accidentally.  Actually the story of this portfolio's finding is almost as interesting as the images themselves. Here's a story about this collection of images...

Sadly..they've already taken down the images and the story details from the Phillips Website..but the single catalog of just this Diane Arbus Portfolio is still available.. and a must have for any Arbus Obsessed photo collector. (Photo by Diane Arbus, Hubert Museum, auction catalog cover image)

Here's the Phillips press release..

DIANE ARBUS: HUBERT'S MUSEUMWORKSTO BE SOLD IN PRIVATE SALE AT PHILLIPS de PURY & COMPANY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NewYork – April 8 – A rare and important collection of early photographs by DianeArbus chronicling life at Hubert's Museum, the legendary dime museum in Times Square, New York is to be sold privately by Phillips de Pury & Company

The collection composed of over 20 vintage prints and selection of the museum's archive was scheduled to be sold at auction in an evening sale tonight at the company's Chelsea galleries. Instead, the works will be sold privately and the spring Photographs auctions will commence tomorrow morning, April 9 with the 10am sale of the Corbeau et Renard Collection,Assembled by Gerd Sander to be followed by the various owner Photographs sale at 2pm

Seminar with Ellen Harvey at the Whitney this Thursday night

Super Star of the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Painter Ellen Harvey will give a free lecture (with regular admission) at the Whitney this Thursday night.

At MAO, we've blogged several times, (here and here) about how much we love the work of Ellen Harvey.. but this time you get to hear it straight from the artist's month.  Actually Ellen is a super speaker/presenter as well as an amazing painter. So this will be one event to check out. (Photo : a part of Ellen's Museum of Failure - The Collection of Impossible Subjects & Invisible Self-Portraits, 2007, installation at the Whitney 2008 Biennial)

As a trained Painter and a Lawyer, it should be fun to hear what insights Ellen has about her Whitney Biennial performance experience. During the early weeks of the show, Ellen did a series of 15-minute portrait drawings in exchange for the subjects responses to a questionnaire criticizing her efforts. Sadly MAO didn't get to participate cause it booked up way too quickly.

Here are the event details...and we think you may have to reserve tickets in advance.

Thursday, April 10 at 7pm.

Seminars with Artists : Ellen Harvey - Thur April 10, 2008

Trained as both a painter and an attorney, Harvey balances an artist's sense of faith with a lawyer's skepticism, as she investigates art's simultaneous potential for beauty and failure. 

Seminars with Artists
Launched in the late 1960s as one of the Whitney Museum's first public programs, Seminars with Artists is an open forum for conversations with some of the most notable American artists.  This season each Seminar explores a topic or theme central to an understanding and appreciation of contemporary art.

Admission is FREE for members; $6 for senior citizens and students; $8 for general admission. Members must make reservations by contacting memberinfo@whitney.org. For all others, advance sales recommended. Space is limited. Tickets may be purchased at the Museum Admissions desk or online by clicking the link at left. Inquiries: public_programs@whitney.org or (212) 570-7715.

Matthew Pillsbury and Ryan McGinley, 2 Photography shows not to miss...

The Matthew Pillsbury show, "Elapsed", at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, and the Ryan McGinley show,"I Know Where the Summer Goes," at Team Gallery both open tonight!

These two young hot photographic artistic talents work in so completely different ways and their images are on opposite extremes of the contemporary photographic spectrum. One using cerebral, dusty old world, black & white photos of long studied quiet settings, and the other working in blazing firecracker colors where he perfectly captures that instant of irreverent exuberance of today's butt naked youth culture.  Also, One show is in an elegant dignified uptown gallery established over 20 years ago, and the other is in a hip trendy SOHO gallery, well at least it's not on the art world's bleeding fringe, The Uber Chic, Lower East Side!  Such huge differences.. but MAO loves them both. They perfectly frame the quickly changing world of contemporary photographic art today.. and we're so excited to see these 2 shows.  Now if we could only be both up and downtown at the same time tonight!

First.. Matthew Pillsbury, Elapsed at Bonni Benrubi Gallery. As most MAO readers already know... we're totally crazy obsessed with this young up and coming photographer..

We've written about Matthew's work before, he's won some big prizes, and we continue to be totally amazed with Matthew's thoughtful B&W time-laps images. Here is part of the galleries note about the new show..

(Photo #1,Matthew Pillsbury, Arteries, Nerves and Veins, Royal College of Surgeons, London, 2007)

This show expresses Pillsbury's continued interest in the relationship between humans and their technology. Incorporating the screens of television, cellular telephones, and computers as his primary artificial light source, Pillsbury's scenes are depleted of solid human forms and we are left with their ghosts. Using long exposures and a large camera the non-human elements of each image reveal themselves in greater detail than the people they belong too. Each player on these carefully designed stages of life evokes a sense of isolation to the viewer and we find their interconnectedness only in what they have "plugged into." Pillsbury has gone beyond the interior personal space and has taken on public spaces where we see ourselves moving anonymously through our world: blackberry's in hand, mere ghosts. It is truly time elapsed.

Also, Matthew has a website worth checking out as well. The show is up at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery on 57th street till May 31st.

The Ryan McGinley show, "I know where the Summer Goes," is at the Team Gallery in Soho.

OK, I know.. We at MAO have blogged on and on, about how much we love the work of young photographer Ryan McGinley.  But this artist just keeps living up to all the MAO hype potential.. and it looks like he's delivered once again!  From what we've seen so far, Ryan is showing additional growth in his artistic vision and signature style.

Here's a exert from the gallery show announcement..

Ryan McGinley’s “snapshots” have been evolving steadily since his guerilla show at 420 West Broadway in 2000. In the intervening eight years he has moved away from an artistic practice that was the soul of casual and towards an elaborated production schedule that raises the ante on “being there.” McGinley has gone from being perceived as the hottest young photographer in town to being considered a serious artist with a rare gift for creating enduring color photographs — photographs that show us the best of youth.

The title of this exhibition, taken from an early B-side by Belle & Sebastian, is more than just a piece of poetic musing. McGinley does, in fact, know where his summers go. In the summer of 2007, for example, he traversed the United States with sixteen models and three assistants, shooting 4,000 rolls of film. From the resulting 150,000 photographs, he arduously narrowed down the body of work to some fifty images, the best of which are on display here at the gallery.

The inspirational images for the project were culled from the kinds of amateur photography that appeared in nudist magazines during the 60s and early 70s. McGinley would sit with his models and look through all of the ephemera of the period that he had collected, discussing with them the mood that he was hoping to capture that day. McGinley had chosen a very specific itinerary that would bring his troop through the incredible range of landscapes that are available across the US and carefully planned a battery of activities, sometimes orchestrating the use of special effects. He has always been quite fond of fireworks and fog machines and in this new work they play a major role.

The very artificial constructedness of the project allows for situations in which the models can both perform and be caught off guard. The resultant pictures of nude young men and women playing and living in the great outdoors are innocent yet erotic, casual yet calculated.

(photo #2, Ryan McGinley, Question Mark, 2007-8, c-print, available in only one size, 30x40, edition of 3)The McGinley show is up at The Team Gallery in SOHO until May 3rd.

Don't miss these 2 Shows!

Sales at the Armory Fair look good so far..

Collectors are cautious but still buying at The Armory 2008 Art Fair.

So far we've gone to both The Armory and The Pulse fairs.. and while we at MAO have been wrongly slandered labeled as the main evil soothsayer for the coming of the Art Apocalypse, we are very happy to report the contemporary art market is NOT crashing yet.

We directly witnesses lots of over highly priced art works getting swooped up by well known collectors.  On Wednesday afternoon we personally know collectors who bought Kehinde Wiley, Paul P, and Chris Dorland paintings.. plus a Spencer Finch Light Sculpture and even several new photo works by Ryan McGinley were all sold to wise members of the MAO fan club.

(Photo #1, Paul Pfeiffer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.2001, digital duralex print)

We'll post more on the NYC art fairs...as we see the rest. But here's one of the first stories we've seen in the press... Story on Bloomberg by Lindsay Pollock of Bloomberg News.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Worried Dealers, Cross-Dressing Potter Open Armory Art Fair
By Lindsay Pollock
     March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Collector Donald B. Marron noticed a less-frenzied pace at New York's Armory Show art fair yesterday as he strolled the aisles during the VIP opening. "You can see people contemplating the art,'' said Marron, chairman of Lightyear Capital LLC, with his curator at his side. "It's the way you ought to look at art.''  Following a seven-year jump in prices for contemporary art and a proliferation of international art fairs, the speculative boom may be losing some steam. "I'm not sure, at the end of the day, how good business is,'' said Roland Augustine, head of the Art Dealers Association of America and co-founder of Chelsea gallery Luhring Augustine, which isn't exhibiting.  "I'm not sure if the market can absorb all this.''  The fair, a showplace for 160 international galleries selling from booths on Pier 94 on the west side of Manhattan, runs through Sunday. Last year attendance topped 52,000 and organizers reported sales of $85 million.
     Marie-Josee Kravis, chairwoman of the Museum of Modern Art's board, and real estate developer Arthur Zeckendorf were among other VIPs. Europeans, particularly French and German, attracted by the weak dollar, were out in force. Some dealers fretted over few or no sales, but business was brisk in some quarters. Chelsea gallery Friedrich Petzel sold works by Allan McCollum, Sarah Morris and a $120,000 sculpture by Cosima von Bonin, made from grungy stuffed animals dangling on clothespins.

                       Pendulous Breasts

     Greenberg Van Doren Gallery sold their priciest work, a $275,000 androgynous wooden sculpture by Katsura Funakoshi with an elongated neck and pendulous breasts.  Sales outperformed London dealer Victoria Miro's expectations.  "Everyone is quite nervous about the economy,'' she said, "but it's been quite normal.''
     Miro sold three vases by the Turner Prize-winning cross- dresser Grayson Perry, priced $30,000 to $90,000. She sold five paintings by Varda Caivano, a young artist whose subtle pastel- hued abstractions cost $12,000 to $18,000. Renee and Robert Belfer, philanthropists and collectors who have a named gallery at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, raced over to a dealer to buy two photographs. "They were already gone,'' he said.
     Die-hard collectors were oblivious to gloomy economic forecasts. Don and Mera Rubell, who own a private museum in Miami, charged around in black sneakers. They said they weren't inclined to buy less.    "After 40 years of collecting, are we pulling back? No! We are buying a ton of art,'' said the tanned, white-haired Don Rubell. "But if everyone else pulls back, we'd be delighted.''

                       Blur of Art

     With over 2,000 artists on view, the art tended to blur, but one-person booths stood out. A one-woman show of Jenny Holzer paintings, marble footstools and LED installations based on declassified U.S. documents at Cheim & Read gallery seemed more museum-like than most.   Annette Lemieux's installation at Paul Kasmin Gallery, based on a country fair, featured gingham paintings, old barn wood, and free apple pie served with whole milk from the jar. A bumper sticker proclaiming  "No Bull'' cost $1.

     Most of the art wasn't rebellious, but Joe Bradley's bland beige painting at the Lower East Side's Canada gallery poked fun at "art as luxury goods,'' said Wallace Whitney, a dealer at the gallery. "This is a tough piece.''     The "Bread'' painting -- Whitney said the color reminded the artist of Wonder bread's crust -- was priced at $30,000.

There were no takers.

--Editors: Mary Romano, Yvette Ferreol.

Jeremy Kost's Art Installation at the Tribeca Grand

Jeremy Kost art installation and party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel this Sunday.

Well.. my little MAO-ettes.. We know everyone will be oh so super busy doing Armory Show events this weekend.. but there's one hot event you might want to put on the calendar for Sunday night.

Jeremy Kost, up and coming artist and Friend Of MAO (to be known as FOMAOs) will be holding court a party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel.

The reception will be hosted by 2008 Whitney Biennial Curator, Shamim M. Momin and artist Terence Koh..so you know it has to be a totally chic event! Jeremy Kost is represented by Conner Contemporary Art in DC so you may already know his Polaroid centric work.

The work Jeremy will be showing is called "Not Yet Titled (Making Faces)", 2008 and it's been inspired by Bruce Nauman's "St