Impressionist and modern paintings up for grabs in London, Polaroid’s collection breaking records, and a rogue copy of the Declaration of Independence…Break out your wallets, it’s June auction season!
Before there were the Hamptons, there was the Hudson. For generations, wealthy New York art collectors, and the artists and writers in their circle, headed to the Hudson River Valley to escape the city. There, they built castlelike mansions, galleries and churches with breathtaking vistas and filled them with equally impressive art-much of it now Read More
Buyers from across the world spent a total of $195,697,000 at Sotheby’s last night, in New York’s second high profile Impressionist and modern art sale in the last two days.
The auctioneer was Tobias Meyer, who had an unhurried approach. He’d freeze into a tableau vivant with each new bid. As for getting buyers to Read More
“L’Odalisque, Harmonie Bleue,” a 1937 Matisse canvas depicting one of the artist’s favorite models lounging in a heavily patterned interior, went for $33.6 million at the Christie’s Impressionist and Modern Art auction last night at Rockefeller Center.
Initially there were five bidders, but as the price climbed it Read More
When someone who was once at the helm of MoMA promises to confront our uncertainties about the last five decades of nonrepresentational art, it’s worth taking notice. But despite the clear and perceptive intelligence of author Kirk Varnedoe (1946-2003), Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock doesn’t quite answer its own bald-faced query: “What is Read More
The late Pierre Matisse (1900-1989), the younger son of the French master Henri Matisse, was one of the most illustrious art dealers of his day. For the art public of my generation, his gallery in the Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street was as much a fixture on the modern art scene in New Read More
Calm, Stately Cruciform Shapes
Excite Respect, Not EnthusiasmThe painter Harvey Quaytman, who died last year at the age of 64 after a long illness, was an unspectacular fixture of the New York art world for close to 40 years. If “unspectacular” seems an odd or callous adjective, especially in light of the artist’s recent passing, Read More
There can hardly be a sadder story in the annals of 20th-century American art than the career of Patrick Henry Bruce (1881-1936), a selection of whose paintings are currently on exhibition at the Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. What makes Bruce’s story especially poignant, even tragic, is its bright beginning. Prodigiously talented, deeply serious and highly ambitious, he Read More
It was to be expected that, when the Morgan Library got around to mounting its first exhibitions of 20th-century art, they would be nothing less than a connoisseur’s delight. After all, a high and unhurried standard of connoisseurship has long been one of the hallmarks of the Morgan’s exhibition and acquisitions programs, and this is Read More
Owing to a temporary absence from New York, I was late in getting to see the Académie Matisse exhibition that David Cohen has organized at the New York Studio School in Greenwich Village, so I must report straightaway that this delightful and highly instructive show is scheduled to close on Nov. 17. For anyone with Read More
