Modern Art Obsession: Happy New Year 2008

Happy New Year to Everyone!!

Let's hope 2008 ~~can't get any worse on wall street~~ is better than 2007.

Here's one of the first Year End 07 reviews by Linda Sandler of Bloomberg News.. I'm sure there will be many more ~~boring ones~~ to come!

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Bill Gross's Stamps, J.K. Rowling Tale Starred at 2007 Auctions
2007-12-30 19:49 (New York)

By Linda Sandler
   Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- This was the year Bill Gross said his
stamps had outperformed his bond fund, Stanley Ho beat Damien
Hirst in bidding for a truffle, and Amazon.com Inc. paid 39 times
estimates for a book of J.K. Rowling stories. Among the mishaps,
Marie Antoinette's pearls and a Van Gogh painting didn't sell.
   New money poured into the salerooms in New York, London and
Hong Kong, swelling auctions by 46 percent at Sotheby's, to $5.33
billion; Christie's International's totals aren't in yet. Andy
Warhol and Mark Rothko paintings fetched more than $70 million
apiece in May, and Jeff Koons in November deposed Hirst as the
priciest living artist.
   Analysts are watching to see if prices continue to rise in
2008. The biggest financial institutions have marked down more
than $80 billion after a surge in U.S. subprime mortgage defaults
prompted investors to shun higher-risk debt.
   ``The art market will soften, and an adjustment in values
will take place, but it may not happen for six months to a
year,'' California collector Eli Broad said in August. ``Many of
the buyers of contemporary art have been hedge-fund managers and
other investors who obviously are having a difficult time and
have lost lots of money,'' Broad said in an e-mail.
   The 2007 boom boosted values of all kinds of collectibles,
from Chinese ceramics and antiquities to diamonds and stamps.
Here are some high points and low points of the auction year:

Pimco Profit

   -- Billionaire fund manager Gross raised $9.1 million for
charity in June by selling early British stamps -- mostly bought
in 2000 -- that outperformed his Pacific Investment Management
Co.'s bond fund, the world's largest.
   ``It's four times cost,'' Gross said after the sale in New
York. ``It's better than the stock market.''
   -- Amazon, after selling more than 12 million Harry Potter
books online, paid almost $4 million at Sotheby's for Rowling's
``The Tales of Beedle the Bard.'' Amazon's Web site has summaries
and reviews of the best-selling author's handwritten stories,
which no one currently has permission to publish.
   -- Christie's sold Steve McQueen's 1963 Ferrari Lusso for
$2.3 million, or twice the top estimate at a California auction
in August. Christie's soon after dismantled its car auction
business, which has much lower commissions than art sales.
   -- Casino billionaire Ho this month paid $330,000 for a
white Italian truffle at a charity auction, exceeding the
previous record by about 50 percent. In September, Ho paid
HK$69.1 million ($8.9 million), the highest price ever for a Qing
Dynasty bronze horse head, giving it to the Chinese government,
which is trying to recover its treasures.
   -- Banksy's ``Di Faced Tenners,'' or 10-pound banknotes
carrying Princess Diana's face instead of Queen Elizabeth II's,
tripled their top estimate at a Bonhams sale in October, fetching
24,000 pounds ($48,000) as demand for the artist soared. Not
everyone is so enthusiastic about the Bristol, England-born
graffiti painter: On London's Charterhouse Street, a defaced
Banksy rat image says, ``Go Back to Bristol, Boy.''

No Buyers

   There were scattered signs the auction houses are entering
more difficult markets, in items that found no buyers after
featuring in the press from the Middle East to Europe, the U.S.
and Asia.
   -- A necklace made from the pearls of Marie Antoinette, who
was guillotined in 1793, failed to sell on Dec. 12 at Christie's,
which valued it at as much as 400,000 pounds.
   -- The same day, Maria Callas's love letters to Giovanni
Battista Meneghini, her former husband and mentor, failed to sell
at a Milan auction. Sotheby's, which had priced the opera
singer's letters at as much as 70,000 euros ($102,739), reoffered
them successfully at the end of the auction at a 50 percent
discount.
   -- The year's big loser was Vincent van Gogh's ``The Fields
(Wheat Fields),'' estimated by Sotheby's at as much as $35
million. It received no bids at a Nov. 7 auction and Sotheby's
stock plunged 35 percent over three days as it took a $14.6
million loss on guaranteed impressionist works that sold below
their estimates.