all shall be well all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well julian of norwich

Saturday, May 13, 2006

The Last Sotheby Auctions, only three i want to buy it from, but those 3 are worth about 15 million (a rymans that look like straight from sears new fridge enamel, a landscape abstrated lonely and pretty agnes, and the urtext of commerically banal kitsch: koons vaccuums)

new records for Robert Ryman (an ugly, obvious, pockmarked disaster, for 8m, 4 times the previous record), Andreas Gursky (buying gursky is like buying falcon videos, strictly for size queens), Damien Hirst (shockingly not the rotting sheep), Lisa Yuskavage (can someone please explain this woman to me, i think she hates tits and thats why she makes them ugly), David Hockney (he should be getting lichenstein prices, he isnt), Neo Ranch (hes german), Brice Marden (post minimalism is fun), and Cecily Brown (i like my paintings about fucking to be a little less abstract.)

and Christies prices for Pierre Soulages (no i dont know him either)( Christo (more orange flags somewhere--i wonder if people buy christos as an oblique way to donate), Elmer Bischoff (fischl if he couldnt paint), Victor Vasarely (surpisingly little number, but out of fashion for so long, dont call it a comeback), Harry Bertoia (is this the guy who does those steel chairs that cause back aches after 10 minutes?) and Forrest Bess (mid 50s, texan, there must be a story here i dont get) Yoshitomo Nara (this is why you dont give hipsters money or musuem jobs, cheap sentiment) Sturtevant ( Robert Irwin (criminally undervalued, even at half a mill), Ross Bleckner (its insane that his record was 120,000, batshit) Karen Kilimnik (imagine if peyton couldnt paint) and 11 others

i lost a contest on the modern art blog, thinking a small sqaure mao in teals would be worth about mill, everyone else thought it would be worth 250-300,000, except the dude who tht it would be worth 550 000, it went for 750, 000...still a steal.

(also why are buying soupcans, again, for the longest time they were thot in the market to be horribly cliched)

most overpriced works:

that fucking picasso
a lichenstein sunrise
that yuskavage painting
and warhols soup can

most overrated artists
hirst
picasso (almost 60 lots of cermaics!)
judd (and i like judd)
warhol (and i like warhol)
phillip di circio (and i hate dicirrcio)

ones that are still a steal:
andre sculptures
mel ramos nudes
robert indiana prints
martha rosler
richard estes (though not as cheap as 5 yrs ago, i was right about the rise of the photorealists)
late 40s picabos (though not next year)
danny lyon
robert irwin
helen frankenthaller
craig elliot
african photography in general
bettina rheims
Nolde, Kircherner and company
Sandblack
Twombly Prints (esp since the drawings and paintings people are paying too much for them)
MArtin prints (see above)
Kenneth Noland (this will change, people will pay more for colourfield in the next 6 years or so, esp with recent kelly action, increased interest in louis, ironic reconstrctions of monochromy, and musuem work--and noland is too big to be ignored)

i dont know how i feel about them
ed ruscha (all prints/photographs, no drawings, and excellent 6/7 figure prices, after decades of being bargin basement, his role of LA patriach/grandfather to us all is being realised, im not sure its a bubble)
tom wessleman limited audience, too much shit work, i think he has reached his level
Rosenquist--his paintings because of size, limited taste, etc, are basically where they will always be--but when his prints, photos, collages and other ephermability starts coming into large scale market forces things might move around

havenet paid attention to old masters, as lm noted in the below comment

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Anthony, how do you follow this stuff? I'm getting more and more interested in it, I usually chase up all the names in yr posts, but I find it really frustratingly hard to take stuff further than that (if you even can?). I guess because I'm raised on music and books, where if you're interested in the thing you buy it and HAVE it, I mean I can see the theoretical objections to this but I would still like a guide, or help, in appreciating art (modern or otherwise really) without a nagging sense of incompletion and failure...

Greg

Anonymous said...

0ooh you bourgie bastard - soup cans are hot because they are ART. They've gone from cliche to history like monica's blue dress. when nothing is new, it's all Art.
geoff

Anthony said...

Greg

I read a lot, a dozen art blogs, artnet.org for auction results, , the christies, phillips and sothebys sites, books on the market, books on art history, magazines (usually these days just art forum and october), i go to galleries and musuems (travel for them often), have people send me catalouges or insitutions send me catalogs,collect post cards, and never be afraid of asking a stupid quesiton (esp with people who are smarter then you)_

its just years of doing the same thing over and over again

can i ask which greg you are?

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