$23m Smith Sculpture Bid

Larry Gagosian, the Manhattan dealer, fought off five aggressive bidders and paid $23.8 million at Sotheby's for David Smith's "CUBI XXVIII" (1965), the last of the artist's renowned Cubi series. The reason for the high price was plain to lovers of contemporary art: this elegantly composed melding of boxes and columns may be the last example of the series to come on the market for some time. Most of the others are in museums or collections where they will stay for generations. So this last-chance opportunity was irresistible, which is why the sculpture's final price was nearly double its high estimate of $12 million.
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Irish Art

Sotheby's Chinese Art

Sotheby’s London Fine Chinese Art sale exceeded estimates and brought a total of £8,427,600 – the highest total ever achieved for Chinese Ceramics. The highest price paid in today’s sale was for an extremely rare and important relief-carved blue and white ‘Dragon’ jar, Guan, Yuan dynasty, which was brought by the dealer Littleton & Hennessy Asian Art for £3,144,000. The cover lot – a large and important ‘Qingbai’ figure of Guanyin, which took first prize for a work of art in the prestigious Asian Art in London Competition – made £1,912,000 - bought by London dealer Eskenazi Ltd. Fifty percent of the top lots found homes in Western art collections demonstrating the international interest and buoyant market for Chinese art. There was competitive bidding both on the telephones and in a packed saleroom.
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Irish Art

Rothko Sets Art Record

An oil painting by Mark Rothko has set a new world record of $22.4m (£12.9m) for any post-war work sold at auction. The work, entitled Homage to Matisse, was sold at Christie's post-war and contemporary art sale in New York. New records were also set for Roy Lichtenstein, Francis Bacon and several other artists. The sale included 18 new records among the 40 artists included in the sale. Homage to Matisse, consisting of contrasting monolithic blocks in red, yellow and blue, beat its high estimate of $20m (£11.5m). The sale took a total of $157.4m (£90.5m), exceeding the pre-sale high-end estimate of $145m (£83.4m). Christie's had anticipated a high total sale and said afterward the strong prices reflected a "very broad and deep market."
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Irish Art

When Dali Wrote To Picasso

Between April 11 and 28 of 1926, Salvador Dalí travelled for the first time to Paris. He visited Pablo Picasso’s studio, whom he considered his main artistic influence. Dalí told Picasso: “I have come to see you before going to the Louvre.” Picasso responded, “You did right to do so.” This is where their relationship begins. A new book titled “Lettres à Picasso (1927-1970)” has just been published. The small book publishes for the first time a group of almost thirty post cards and telegrams and a letter, all of which are kept at the Musée Picasso in Paris. Dalí wrote in Catalonian, Spanish and French, using his peculiar spelling. There are no letters from Picasso to Dalí. He never answered his letters.
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Irish Art

Hitler's Art Under Hammer

As a work of art, it's hardly the stuff of genius. Somewhere between caricature and faux-naïf portraiture, it's a watercolour study of an interwar German postman - replete with drooping moustache. In this instance, however, artistic merit is hardly the issue: the picture was painted by Adolf Hitler while he killed time after the doomed Munich Putsch of 1923. And it sold this week for £5,200. In Cornwall.
In 1935, a group of his aides was given the job of recovering as many of Hitler's paintings as possible, which were duly stored in tunnels below the Platterhof Hotel, close to Hitler's Alpine retreat at Berchtesgarden. At the end of the war, they were seized by the American army.
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Irish Art

"Garden Shed" Art Forger

Curators at the archeological museum in Madrid were entranced by the bronze aquamanile, or water carrier, in the shape of a dove. The Madrid dove was almost unique art , because the original Arabic inscriptions had been overlaid in Latin — the embodiment of the reconquest of Spain by Christians in the 15th century after centuries of Moorish rule. The museum, which has the role of safeguarding evidence of Spain’s art heritage, refused a request from Sotheby’s, the art auction house, for an export licence. Instead it persuaded a Madrid bank to buy the dove for the equivalent of £900,000 and donate it to the nation in lieu of taxes. It is now on show in the museum. Unfortunately, the dove is almost certainly a fake, according to friends of an English master forger. They believe he made it in a garden shed in Herefordshire out of old bath taps.
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Irish Art

Tate Defends "Art Ransom"

The Tate has denied claims by a BBC programme that it paid a multi-million pound ransom to recover two stolen Turner paintings. Undercover Art Deal - to be screened on Wednesday - claims payments of around £3m were made to secure the return of the art - stolen in 1994. A Tate spokeswoman insisted the money was paid for information and that "no ransom was paid". A BBC spokesman said the corporation stood by the forthcoming art programme. He added that the documentary had been through "the usual rigorous editorial procedures". Following the theft, the Tate made a claim and the insurers settled for the full insured sum of £24million for the art.
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Irish Art