Chimp Outsells Warhol

Paintings by Congo the chimpanzee sold at auction for more than $26,352. The collection of three tempera paintings - all abstract - were auctioned at Bonhams in London alongside works by impressionist master Renoir and pop art provocateur Andy Warhol. But while Warhol and Renoir's work didn't sell, bidders lavished attention on Congo's paintings.
An American bidder named Howard Hong, who described himself as an "enthusiast of modern and contemporary painting," purchased the lot of paintings for $26,352. Congo, born in 1954, produced about 400 drawings and paintings between the ages of 2 and 4. Pablo Picasso is reported to have hung a Congo painting on his studio wall after receiving it as a gift.
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Irish Art

Picasso Ex-Lover Sells Up

On June 27, Genevieve Laporte will sell 20 of Picasso's sketches in Paris worth around $2 million at the Hotel Dassault in Paris.
Laporte met Picasso when she was 17 and interviewed him for the school newspaper sipping hot chocolate whilst Picasso recommended books. It was innocent - at least on her side.The two had their on-and-off affair when Picasso was with painter Francoise Gilot. The mother of two of his children, Gilot was another rare woman with the guts to dump Picasso instead of suffering. Picasso took a break from Gilot in the summer of 1951 to vacation in Saint Tropez with Laporte, poet Paul Eluard and his wife, Dominique. Laporte remembers it as a golden time.
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Irish Art

Soap Art For $18,000

Perhaps the oddest piece of work at Art Basel is a bar of soap, displayed on a square of black velvet, purportedly made from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's fat, removed during liposuction. Gianni Monti's work called 'Clean Hands' - the title is a play on the name of an anti-Mafia group - sold in less than an hour for 15,000 euros ($18,000) to a private Swiss collector.
Art Basel is the world's largest annual art fair where 275 dealers in modern and contemporary art display their wares making it a mecca for over 50,000 collectors and curators. Prices are soaring for star-quality artists, topping levels charged for the old masters in a market that has an estimated $20 billion annual turnover, making veteran art experts wonder if this feeding frenzy can really last.
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Irish Art

Screamless In Oslo

Hundreds of art enthusiasts have turned up for the reopening of the Munch Museum in Oslo, 10 months after it closed following a spectacular heist of two of the Norwegian painter's masterpieces, including his world-famous The Scream. Unable to put the originals back on display, the museum has resorted to hanging less spectacular versions of the stolen paintings: a pastel of The Scream and a lithography of Madonna. "We can't sit here and have two holes on the wall," museum director Gunnar Soerensen said during a press tour of the museum before its opening.
Local media have meanwhile speculated that the works were damaged during the heist and that the robbers may even have destroyed them completely in an attempt to get rid of evidence of their involvement in the crime.
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Irish Art

De Niro Art Retrospective

Robert de Niro has paid tribute to his father, a painter whose works are featured in a new exhibit in northeastern France. "This is a magnificent exhibit," an emotional De Niro said of the 56 works of his father, Robert de Niro Sr., who passed away more than a decade ago.
The exhibit, in the recently opened La Piscine Museum in the town of Roubaix, is the first European retrospective of the elder De Niro's paintings. In the 60s, the elder De Niro spent several years living in France, studying Matisse, Manet, Gaugin, Bonnard and other painters who influenced his work.
Irish Art