Bloomberg reports that Christie’s is scapping plans for an art investment fund and loan division.  The article also briefly discusses what we’ve talked about many times before: the downturn in the high-end art market, despite recent successful sales.  Pictured above is an affordable oil on canvas being offered in Christie’s Interiors Sale in early September.

You know, getting an art-focused blog off the ground is a lot more difficult than creating a celebrity gossip site.  There are a lot more people who kill time at work by looking for pictures of movie stars than, I don’t know, fine art photography of Iranian bodybuilders (see below!).  So I have a little NO SHAME in sharing with you, my loyal readers, that Brad Pitt dropped around $960,000 yesterday on the above Neo Rauch painting while perusing the offerings at Art Basel.  It’s relevant, I swear.

The Associated Press tells us “Rauch is among Europe’s top painters, drawing on traditions of Eastern Bloc realism and Western abstraction.”  He’s represented in New York by the prestigious David Zwirmer Gallery. 

(If this turns me into the next Perez Hilton, there’s no guarantee I won’t do this daily regularly…just letting you know)

I’m a sucker for an open bar, so I was delighted to receive an invitation to attend the Living Art Exhibition‘s opening event yesterday evening at the Red Bull Loft in NYC.  The concept is an interesting one: a live event in which visitors watch on in a lounge-like atmosphere as artwork is created by a variety of emerging artists who themselves are competing.  Competing for what you ask?  Well, in this case, the top four- as voted by the spectators- compete live during the Central Park Summer Stage events, thus receiving further public exposure.  The ‘top’ artist receives $20,000 and a commission for a mural on the side of a Manhattan building.

The crowd was as eclectic as the booze offerings (Colt 45 beer in ironic, individual brown paper bags was served beside Svedka vodka concoctions); in attendance were lots of media people, music industry folks, older gentlemen in suits from the supporting Alchemy Properties and some skinny boy art types, to name just a few.  The DJ played a combination of hip-hop, classic pop and dance.  The MC you’d more likely find at a Brooklyn rap show than a Chelsea art exhibit.  Looking around, I couldn’t help but wonder to whom they were actually marketing the event, which will be transformed into a public gallery space until June 19th.  Another fundamental issue struck me: do the artists really produce meaningful, thoughtful work in a competitive forum of this sort?  Clearly not.  But who wouldn’t want the publicity?  This was all about pretty and accessible paintings, advertising, and an entertaining environment– and by those standards it was a success.

More information, including the gallery schedule, can be found at www.artbattles.com.

It’s like Francis Bacon week on The Amateur Art Collector!  A big retrospective of his opened at the Met yesterday, but to surprisingly little buzz in New York as far as I can tell.  There’s also a related lecture tomorrow at 6pm that’s free with museum admission.

Here’s the official website and blurb:

The first major exhibition in New York in twenty years devoted to one of the most compelling painters of the twentieth century, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective features some 130 works–sixty-five paintings and as many archival items from public and private collections from around the world–that span the entirety of the artist’s full and celebrated career. Marking the centenary of the artist’s birth in Dublin in 1909, the exhibition brings together the most significant works from each period of Bacon’s career, focusing on the key subjects and themes that run through his extraordinary creative output. The presentation affords the most comprehensive examination to date of Bacon’s sources and working processes, offering a reevaluation of the artist’s work in light of a range of new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992.

I thought it’d be fun to do a post on a non-listed artist that I “discovered” at an upstate New York sale around two years ago.  The auction house focused exclusively on books and print materials, so I was surprised to come across some really attractive, modern paintings by an artist named Rosalind Goldstein Bell.  Here’s an excerpt from the biography they supplied:

R. G. Bell (1912-1990) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Rosalind attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in Music. She was an accomplished pianist and mezzo soprano. She spent many years as a concert singer, and was a personal friend of the renowned, late tenor, Jan Peerce and his late wife Alice. During family summer vacations, Rosalind always had a penchant for sketching the beautiful landscapes around Wisconsin inland lakes. Rosalind and her husband, a violinist, moved to New York during the 1950s and were a part of the Long Island and Manhattan music world. Friends included the late well-known cellist Leonard Rose and his family. In her later years on Long Island, she concentrated on painting and sketching using oils, water colors, and acrylics. She studied with the American Modernist painter, Frank Kleinholz (1901-1987). In 1983, Rosalind and her husband moved to Ithaca to be near their daughter. Despite failing health, Rosalind continued to paint and had an exhibit at the White Apple Gallery on State Street. She wanted to share her art with the world, and would be thrilled to know that people are finding pleasure in her legacy.

I guessed from the personal last line of this biography that the dozen or so paintings in the auction were probably being consigned by her family and not from some middle man.  The mention of Frank Kleinholz intrigued me even though I wasn’t familiar with his work, but it seemed to imply that he was a noted artist.  Most importantly, I was drawn to the bold colors and brush strokes in all of her pieces being sold, so I went ahead and bought a few– especially since they were going for very little money (presumably because the crowd was there to buy books, not art).

A little internet research found that, in fact, R. G. Bell doesn’t have a presence on the major art sites online.  I did see a visual similarity between Frank Kleinholz’s and some of Bell’s work, which seemed to confirm the biography’s assertion that she studied with him.  Pictured above, for example, is Bell’s Web circa 1960.  I still like her work and have two of her pieces adorning my apartment.  The other four or five paintings I recently photographed and referred to an appraiser in California who is an expert in Kleinholz to see what she thinks in terms of their appeal in terms of collectibility to fans of that artist.

I guess the lesson here- if there is one- is that while, yes, we amateur collectors enjoy the comfort of knowing that our financial investment in art is ‘safe’ when the artist is ‘listed’ and has a history of sale results, I’d encourage you to not let that knowledge hinder your decision to go after the work of ‘undiscovered’ artists to which you’re attracted!

I stumbled upon a way to get free tickets (they’re usually $20/ticket) to this year’s International Fine Art Fair, being held at The Park Avenue Armory in New York from May 1st-9th.

Okay, so go to the NYTimes website.  Scroll down and click on the Arts section.  Click on any slideshow in that section (underneath the one sentence descriptions of the listed articles).  As you click through the images in the slideshow, you’ll see different advertisements in the lower right-hand corner…generally for broadway shows.  If you keep going, at least as of a couple hours ago, you’ll eventually see an ad for this Art Fair…click it and it will take you to a site that allows you to print out a complimentary ticket for two!

I’d like to think they’re just being generous, but it’s probably a sign that they’re worried about low attendance due to the economy. 

While not the hottest show that comes to the city each year, it’s still a good chance to see some great work all in one spot– like the Alexander Calder piece pictured above being presented by Vincent Vallarino Fine Art Ltd.