Turner Smashes Art Record

A masterpiece hidden from the public eye for 20 years was sold at Christie's auction house in New York City Thursday for $35.8 million. The 1841 painting by J.M.W. Turner garnered a record price for the auction sale of a British artist.

The painting of Venice called "Giudecca, La Donna della Salute and San Giorgio" was donated to the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation by a private collector who bought the painting in 1992. Last seen at a public auction in 1897, the painting broke the previous record for a British work held by John Constable's The Lock at $29 million. It was one of three Venetian oil paintings developed by Turner for an 1841 exhibition at the British Royal Academy, where it sold for 250 guineas. The previous highest price commanded by a Turner at auction was the $12.5 million paid for Seascape, Folkestone in 1984.
Irish Art

FBI "Sting" Fake Art

A man who posed as a member of the Saudi royal family and tried to sell a forged Rembrandt painting was sentenced to five months in federal prison and another five months of home confinement. Majed A. Ihmoud, 53, of St. Charles, Missouri, pleaded guilty in to conspiring to commit mail fraud for his role in the fake Rembrandt caper. Ihmoud is a Palestinian from Jordan who came to the U.S. in 1971 and has been a U.S. citizen since 1987, the FBI said. In the fake art scheme, Ihmoud dressed as a sheik and took a forgery of the "Man With the Golden Helmet," long believed to have been painted by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn, to a St. Louis hotel. He expected to sell it for $2.8 million. "He said he had a Rembrandt for sale that had come out of the Middle East." The buyer was actually an undercover FBI agent. The real "Man With the Golden Helmet," which hangs in a Berlin museum, is likely not a Rembrandt either. In 1986, art experts concluded that an unknown artist in Rembrandt's company had painted it.
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Irish Art

$120 Klimt Art In LA

Five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen by the Nazis and ordered returned from Austria went on display in Los Angeles on Tuesday after a lengthy dispute highlighting the ownership complexities of the world's great art works. The paintings, valued at more than $120 million, include a famous golden portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, wife of the original owner of the work. They had been displayed at a Vienna museum since World War II after being seized by the Nazis when Germany annexed Austria in 1938. After a seven-year legal case, an arbitration court in January ordered the Austrian government to return the five paintings to Los Angeles resident Maria Altmann, the niece and heir of Bloch-Bauer, who fled Nazi-ruled Austria for the United States. Altmann, 90, originally wanted the paintings to remain in an Austrian museum but authorities said they could not afford to buy them back.
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Irish Art

The Wrong Gallery

The Wrong Gallery was conceived by the Italian prankster artist Maurizio Cattelan and two friends, and opened in New York's Chelsea district in October 2002. It consisted of an average-sized glass door with only one square metre of exhibition space behind it. "The Wrong Gallery is the back door to contemporary art," said its founders with more than a hint of irony, "and it's always locked." Typical of the art exhibitions were signs saying that it was closed, or a sculpture of a baby in an abandoned car outside. But, last July, the Wrong Gallery was evicted. Since December, it has taken up temporary residence on the third level of Tate Modern. The mini Wrong Gallery is just 18in high and is now on sale. Made of resin, glass, aluminium and steel with electric lighting, it costs £700, plus VAT. "Open the door, turn on the light, install a work and become the curator you always imagined you could be," reads the sales blurb.
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Irish Art

50 Rembrandt's on Show

An exhibit of 50 art works by Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn has opened in his former home in Amsterdam to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his birth. The show, "Rembrandt - Quest of a Genius," features about one-sixth of his art in the four-story house where he lived from 1639 to 1658. Ernst van de Wetering, head of the Rembrandt Research Project, said Rembrandt earned a good living as an artist, but died almost penniless in 1669 at the age of 63 because of his poor money management skills. Van de Watering said Rembrandt painted his own self-portrait many times because they sold well, and not because he wanted to experiment.The works are so different that "you can't believe it's the same person," he said. Amongst the art are two recently discovered pieces from Warsaw - "Scholar at His Desk" and "Girl in a Picture Frame" as well as a painting of a maid in a white bonnet, auctioned off recently to a New York art collector for $4.3 million.
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Irish Art

Warhol May Fetch $15 Million

New York art dealer Irving Blum long ago donated most of his art collection of Andy Warhol's pop art depictions of Campbell's Soup cans to the Museum of Modern Art, but he apparently held back at least one art work, from the days before Warhol discovered silkscreening. "'Small Torn Campbell's Soup Can (Pepper Pot),' an early hand-painted work from 1962, will be auctioned at Christie's sale of postwar and contemporary art in New York on May 9. It is expected to fetch $10 million to $15 million.