Contemporary Art

Hedge funds continue to stake a claim on big-ticket names

PHILLIPS de Pury & Company are to open a new London saleroom and hold a special Contemporary Art and Design auction on October 14 during the Frieze fair.

The current boom in the market for Chinese Contemporary paintings could hardly be better illustrated than by the way sale statistics have been leapfrogging around the globe in the last couple of weeks.

The enormous potential of the market for contemporary Chinese art was dramatically underlined by almost frenzied scenes at Sotheby’s (20/12% buyer’s premium) eagerly awaited March 31 Contemporary Art Asia sale in New York.

Bloomsbury Auctions are opening a Contemporary art department to compete for a share of London's burgeoning market.

The UK’s leading art charity has commissioned its first-ever work by a contemporary artist as part of a campaign to boost funding for the arts.

New buyers help records tumble as London reinforces its importance

Christie’s will test the potentially lucrative waters of the Middle Eastern market in situ by holding an inaugural sale in Dubai this spring.

ST James’s gallery Frost and Reed, founded in 1808, have undergone a management shake-up and will have an increased focus on Contemporary art.

INTERNATIONAL exhibition and publishing company dmg world media have acquired Chicago-based Expressions of Culture Inc., producers of SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York.

Christie’s return higher total for a single sale, but Sotheby’s secure top price of series

London turned up the heat in the market for Contemporary art when both Sotheby’s and Christie’s achieved outstanding results at their June evening sales.

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.