Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale last night posted a healthy $407.5 million total and, for a few brisk hours at least, the art market looked very much alive and well. Robert Mnuchin’s collection supplied the evening’s ballast, Rothko delivered the expected gravitas, and younger names Ding Shilun and Yu Nishimura rode a wave of competitive bidding to new auction records.
The salesroom had that familiar mix of tension, theater, and financial acrobatics — equal parts confidence game and blood sport — with bidders apparently deciding that global instability is no reason to stop chasing expensive paintings.
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Today I find myself remising about windy city aesthetics, as I recall this essay I wrote for Phillips on the occasion of “Cooler By the Lake” 2021 exhibition curated by Karen Lennox. In the summer of 1984 I went back to my hometown with a mission for Flash Art to profile Chicago’s contemporary galleries. 9 days on the beat I got to see first hand the zany, energetic and often hard to pigeonhole art scene.
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Images:
Roger Brown, Georgian Overview, 1976
Jim Nutt, A Trowel, 1988
Karl Wirsum, Mane and Hairdress, 1969
Miyoko Ito, E for Elissa, circa 1970-72
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@phillipsauction
Writing about Andrew Crispo again means revisiting one of the most volatile trajectories the New York art world has ever produced. My new article follows the thread from Crispo’s early championing of American Modernism—helping place major Hoppers, O’Keeffes, and even a Brancusi—through the tax-evasion case that unraveled his empire, the scandals that consumed him, and the unlikely way his name resurfaced around a record-setting Hockney sale this month. His rise and ruin remain cautionary, but the market still carries traces of his taste.
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On the beat! Art market bounce back continues in New York with Christie’s $123.5m 21st-century sale
- Led by a Christopher Wool painting that made $19.8m, the evening included 19 lots from the Chicago collectors Gale Neeson and Stefan Edlis
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Kicking off New York November sales, Christie’s nets healthy $690m from double-header 20th-century auction - The house’s total is up 42% from last year’s equivalent sale, and it set new auction records for Leonor Fini and Beauford Delaney.
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