The Art Newspaper reports that a federal appeals court in New York affirmed that buyers of Pablo Picasso's painting Le peintre et son modèle were not liable to the owner, Sture Hjalmar Graffman, who never received sale proceeds via intermediaries. The court applied UCC provisions to determine that the painting was entrusted to an intermediary and that non-professional buyers did not have to verify provenance in this context.
The Globe and Mail reports on Sotheby's spring auction of Important Canadian Art in Toronto with works by Cornelius Krieghoff, A. J. Casson, Lawren S. Harris, Arthur Lismer, William Kurelek and Emily Carr. Notable pieces include Paul Peel's Before the Bath (1892, estimated $180,000–$220,000), a Lawren Harris landscape (Lake, North Labrador), and Jean-Paul Riopelle Untitled (1953), the first Canadian artist to break the million-dollar mark at auction; the piece notes a record $1,018,750 for Emily Carr’s War Canoes, Alert Bay (1912) at Heffel Fine Art Auction House in Vancouver. It also mentions concerns about a price-fixing scandal involving Sotheby's and Christie's and quotes Linda Rodeck on the antitrust case and market chatter.
Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist Composition, painted circa 1919–1920, sold for $17 million at Phillips Auctioneers on May 11, as reported by the Observer. The piece discusses the sale as a notable event in the modern art market and references coverage by The New York Times, as well as commentary on the role of major auction houses.
The article discusses Bernard Arnault challenging Sotheby’s and Christie’s dominance in the art auction world, with his Phillips auction house debuting in the major leagues and failing to meet many estimates. Kazimir Malevich’s Abstract, “Suprematist Composition,” was the top lot, selling for $15.5 million on a $15 million guarantee, while most works sold below estimates; Arnault reportedly guaranteed minimum prices to keep works away from the big houses.
The article reports that MGM Grand intends to sell most of the art collection at the Bellagio, which it acquired as part of a $4.4 million buyout of Mirage Resorts. Mirage owns about half the Bellagio gallery with a total value of $400 million, while Steve Wynn owns the other half and leases pieces to the property; the plan includes keeping a rotating gallery and not selling Picasso works central to the Bellagio restaurant.
Henri Matisse’s 1909 bronze sculpture La Serpentine, based on a photograph, sold at Sotheby’s for a record $14 million. The sale was part of a group of 42 Impressionist and modern works that brought in over $140 million, including Monet’s Le Portail for over $24 million, Picasso’s Compotier et Guitare for nearly $10 million, Monet’s Nympheas for more than $8 million, and Toulouse-Lautrec’s L’Abandon ou les Deux Amis for more than $9 million.
The Stradivari violin, a 300-year-old Cremonese instrument, sold for 1,326,000 dollars at Christie's East in New York, setting a U.S. auction record for a musical instrument. The instrument, known as the Taft violin, was purchased by a private collector who plans to lend it to a professional soloist. The sale contributed to a total auction result of 2,604,929 dollars across 239 lots.
The two Turner paintings, Shade and Darkness: Evening of the Deluge and Light and Colour: Morning after the Deluge, were stolen from the Tate Gallery in 1994 and are suspected to be in the hands of Serbian criminals linked to Arkan. The paintings, each valued at about £12 million, were on loan to a gallery in Germany and later connected to Balkan war criminals; Arkan was killed in Belgrade earlier he was involved in drugs trafficking and arms smuggling.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Walker Art Center jointly acquire Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2: The Drones' Exposition, a multimedia ensemble including sculpture, photographs, and a 79-minute 35mm film; SFMOMA will debut the work on the West Coast beginning May 20. Barney stars as Gilmore, with Norman Mailer appearing as the magician.