Art Collecting news at Art News Blog is a listing of all the posts that have discussed world art auction sales, Notable painting sales, expensive paintings, art collecting, and buying art.
See also Art Auctions or Charles Saatchi News

Art Blog> Art News Categories> Buying Art News

• Damien Hirst Diamond Skull Sells - Damien Hirst's diamond skull (For the Love of God) has reportedly been sold for $100 million. The buyers were an unnamed investment group, which doesn't surprise me at all.
• Top Ten Art Collectors - Art magazine has released a list of the top 200 art collectors from around the world. It's probably a good list of names to have on your exhibition mailing list, especially if your works sell for more than a few hundred thousand a piece.
• Art Bubbles go Pop - As records are broken on a regular basis now, most people tend to agree that we have an art bubble.. or at least an art bubble in the Impressionist/Modern/Contemporary market.
• Charles Saatchi Buys an Exhibition - The British art collector Charles Saatchi has made news after he bought a whole exhibition by the Royal Academy art student James Howard.
• The Old Time by John Brack - A painting by the Australian artist John Brack sold at auction for a record price this week, making "The Old Time" the most expensive Australian painting. The painting of a ballroom dancing couple sold for about $3.3 million dollars.
• World Art Boom - Art Market Trends - ArtPrice puts out an annual "Art Market Trends" paper that looks into the works that are being sold at auction each year. 2006 has been a BOOM year for auction houses around the world. Here's the ArtPrice paper in PDF format.
• Most Expensive Paintings in the World - While wandering around Wikipedia I discovered a list of the most expensive paintings in the world. Their prices have been adjusted for inflation too, which is quite interesting.
• Art Collector Heinz Berggruen Dies at 93 - The Jewish German art collector Heinz Berggruen has died on the 23rd of February at the age of 93. Berggruen collected major works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, and Pablo Picasso.
• London Art Market Sales - The world art market has showed no signs of slowing down in February. Chris-toby's have had an impressive month in London with almost $500,000,000 being sold between them. Their sales included Impressionist and Modern paintings and works on paper, German and Austrian Art, and Surrealist art.
• Gagosian Gallery Profiting from the Internet - Artists have been taking advantage of the internet to sell work for a few years now. Painters can now make enough money on eBay to pay the bills. There's also a group of artists that have created quite a buzz with the use of blogs to sell their paintings.
• Rembrandt's Apostle James Makes $25 Million - A rare Rembrandt painting from the later part of his life recently sold for $25.8 million USD at Sotheby's in New York. The previous record for the artist was $28.7 million back in 2000.
• Record Prices for Paintings or Not - The ArtNewspaper has an interesting article up about the reality of the prices paid for some of the record breaking paintings that are being sold at auctions and privately. With so much secrecy and denial around the multi-million dollar sales, most of the prices are just guesses, with many of them being wrong.
• Steve Wynn's Insurance Claim for Elbowed Picasso - Towards the end of last year the casino mogul Steve Wynn elbowed his Picasso, which put a hole in the work, and lost him a deal that could have put $139 million in his pocket. Well, now the Las Vegas collector is looking to make an insurance claim worth $54 million.
• Record Prices for Paintings or Not - The ArtNewspaper has an interesting article up about the reality of the prices paid for some of the record breaking paintings that are being sold at auctions and privately. With so much secrecy and denial around the multi-million dollar sales, most of the prices are just guesses, with many of them being wrong.
• Fra Angelico's Found in Spare Room - I'm always suspicious of masterpieces being found in garages or spare rooms. If I was an art forger I would use this technique as you get a lot of media attention and you're not really saying it is by the artist, you're saying you found it in the garage. The art experts will say it is or isn't by the artist.
• Record Price for Jackson Pollock Painting - The New York Times has reported that a Jackson Pollock drip painting owned by David Geffen has been sold for $140 million. If confirmed, this would make it the most expensive painting in the world.
• Buying and Selling Art Online - ArtInfo has profiled five "Award-Worthy Web Galleries" that allow you to buy and sell work online. It's a very mixed bunch, aiming at very different buyers/sellers, but they all seem worthy enough to mention.
• Steve Wynn Elbows a Picasso - The Las Vegas casino billionaire recently made international headlines after bumping into his painting by Pablo Picasso and putting a hole in it. How pointy must his elbows be to put a hole in the canvas?
• Art Collectors - Artinfo.com has interesting little feature on their site where they profile art collectors. A recent profile was of the Los Angeles based art collector Stavros Merjos. He collects artists like Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Takashi Murakami, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, and a bunch of emerging artists.
• Charles Saatchi Interview - A reader pointed out that I missed an interesting interview with the British art collector Charles Saatchi last month. The Guardian newspaper popped into the house of Saatchi and his famous cooking partner Nigella Lawson to ask him a few questions about art and life.
• Record Brett Whiteley Price - One of my favorite artists recently broke his own sales record at a recent Sotheby's auction in Australia. The four meter wide painting by Brett Whiteley sold for $2.04 million in Sydney lastnight.
• Selling Art Online - USA Today has wrote an article about how artists are taking advantage of the internet to sell their work.
• Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer - Mario Naves of the New York Observer has written an interesting article about his experience with the most expensive painting in the world. His first thoughts of the $135 million painting by Gustav Klimt were of a piece of cloth covered with colored mud..
• Shit Art - Cloaca Machine - I was just watching a program about the Belgian conceptual artist Wim Delvoye. It got me thinking about what art really is. It's a question that is asked so much that it can become boring even thinking about it. But his Cloaca machine forced me to ask myself what art is again.
• Money Series Painting - I recently received a new painting to add to my small but growing art collection. It's called 7 Euros by the Australian artist Anthony White. Seven Euros is currently worth 7 euros, including postage and handling ;-)
• Most Expensive Painting Ever - There has been a lot of news around about the most expensive painting ever to be sold recently, so I thought I would go see what people have been saying about it. For those that didn't hear, a Gustav Klimt painting sold to Ronald S Lauder for about $135 million (American dollars).
• Replacing a Dead Shark - Perhaps his most famous work (The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living) will soon be replaced with a new dead shark. The work was made in 1991 and is already falling apart, the liquid is murky, and the shark has changed shape.
• Most Expensive Painting by Gustav Klimt - The famous Austrian painter Gustav Klimt has reportedly set a record for the most expensive painting to be sold. The 1907 iconic work "Portrait of Adele Block-Bauer I" has sold for $135 million dollars.
• Art Collector Kenneth Thomson - Kenneth Roy Thomson was Canada's richest man and a very active art collector. The former chairman of Thomson Corp. apparently died of a heart attack in his office on Monday the 12th.
• Aboriginal Art Industry - The Aboriginal art industry in Australia has seen a dramatic rise in popularity during recent times. With the value of the paintings increasing, corruption and fraud are also increasing.
• Steve Wynn Buying Spree - The Las Vegas billionaire casino owner Steve Wynn has been busy spending up to 30 million pounds in auction rooms during the past couple of months. A couple notable works he has purchased include the Ming vase that he gave to China and the JMW Turner painting that became the most expensive British painting to be sold.
• Art-o-mat Art Vending Machine - The more I think about the Art-o-mat, the more I like it! It's a vending machine that sells affordable original art.
• Hazel Dooney Print - The Australian artist Hazel Dooney has a high resolution work that can be downloaded online and printed out as an original print. She will also sign the work if you send it to her, along with a stamped, self addressed envelope.
• Anti-Abortion Cartoon Auction - This cartoon (to the left) has been posted on quite a few blogs recently, and has now been put up for auction on E-Bay. The highest bidder is currently $1,725 USD and it still has about two and half days left.
• Buying Art for Money or Love? - Charles Dupplin works for the London based insurer Hiscox, and has wrote a few tips on collecting art. Hiscox also has its own collection of contemporary art here.
• Artists Resale Rights Levy - Britain's booming contemporary art market may be affected by the new "droit de suite" tax or the artists resale rights levy when it is introduced next year. Artists or their families will receive a percentage of the sale of their work for up to 70 years after his/her death.
• Rich Art Collectors - Modern day Medicis or top billionaire art collectors according to the Forbes Business magazine.
• I see, I love, I buy - Wealthy art collectors in the United Kingdom that once only bought old masters are now happily opening up their mind and wallet to new art.
• Investing in Art Incentives - Interest free loans for those looking to buy contemporary art is one way of encouraging people to purchase art. The English Arts Council and the Scottish Arts Council are offering loans of up to 2000 pounds.
• Art Bargain.. or not - This a great idea, where student works and works by famous artists are mixed and offered anonymously at the same price. Knowing the style of the artist doesn't help either, as there are students imitating the styles of the established artists, and the established artists work in a style they don't normally use.
• Monet, Money & Art - At one time, strapped for cash, he disposed of his pictures in job lots for 25 francs each, not much more than he got for the caricatures he did at the age of 16 and sold on the streets to passers-by.
• Buying Art - I could never imagine buying a painting that I did not like, in the hope of it increasing in value. I would rather a piece of paper from the stock exchange than a painting I didn't like.
  

Posts that have mentioned important art collections and notable art sales..

• National Gallery of Australia Kandinsky Painting - If Australia was outraged at paying $1 million for a Jackson pollock in the 70s, I can't imagine the controversy of paying $35 million for a Wassily Kandinsky painting "Sketch for Deluge II". The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) were thinking about buying the important work by the Russian expressionist/abstract painter.
• The Physical Impossibility Of Death In The Mind Of Someone Living - Damien Hirst's shark is migrating to the United States from it current UK homeland.
  
• Microsoft's Art Collector moves on - Michael Klein from Microsoft is leaving his job as art curator to take a new position as the director of the International Sculpture Center in New Jersey.
• Art Gallery of New South Wales Acquires Cy Twombly - The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney is delighted to announce one of most significant acquisitions the Gallery has ever made - Cy Twombly's Three studies from the Temeraire.
• Sins of the flesh - François Boucher - "The prostituting of talent is something we have come to associate with contemporary art, with its seven-figure prices, its desperately competitive dealers and collectors, and its career-minded, media-savvy artists.