As The Observer—and every other news outlet—has been scrambling to report in detail, the city is abuzz over the high-profile indictment and arrests of figures in an art-world money laundering scheme involving seven-figure card games, international sports betting rings and mixed martial arts fighters who played the Rocky Balboa role of debt collector. Read More
Call it the latest symptom of Marie-Thérèse fever!
Last week I wrote about the Picasso market, specifically with regard to the increased interest in works featuring his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter. Yesterday Christie’s London held the auction referenced in that piece (the Impressionist and Modern Sale) and the star Marie-Thérèse, Jeune fille endormie, Read More
While much of New York’s art world is away on a European grand tour—starting with the Venice Biennale, moving on to Art Basel, the annual art fair in Switzerland, which opens next week, and winding up in London for a round of auctions—a handful of museum-worthy exhibitions make this a good time to visit Chelsea’s Read More
Simon Shaw is droll in the way you might expect a Sotheby’s department head to be, but there was only a shadow of irony in his voice when The Observer brought up Femmes lisant (deux personnages), a 1934 Picasso painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter that Sotheby’s sold in May for $21.3 million.
“It’s the summer of Read More
New York’s spring auction blockbuster is opening on a buzzy note: A strong stock market, a sunny spring, a good selection of million-dollar merchandise. One boldface name stands out: Pablo Picasso. Sotheby’s and Christie’s are selling a couple dozen works by the Spanish master, a far more varied selection of them than usual. Picasso lived Read More
The exhibition “Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914,” at the Museum of Modern Art, is not about guitars, violins, bottles or cups, the subjects of the 65 drawings, collages, constructions, paintings and photographs on view. It’s about what is possible in a studio when everything clicks. Entering the show, organized by Anne Umland with Blair Hartzell, you find Read More
The murmur you hear wafting down from Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street is the sound of genteel gloating. The Metropolitan Museum of Art just released its attendance figures for the fiscal year and, at 5.24 million, the total is their highest since 2001, when terrorism dented tourism to New York City. Better yet, the number Read More
