Press highlights

Acquisition – Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales – Il eut un père célèbre et une vie très courte, Juan de Zurbáran tomba donc dans l’oubli. Il peignit des natures mortes, peu nombreuses et rarement signées, qui furent parfois attribuées à Francisco. C’est le tableau du musée Khanenko de Kiev, Nature morte au service de chocolat, qui servit de point de départ pour constituer un corpus, après la découverte d’une signature en 1938. En 2009, Odile Delenda publia le catalogue raisonné de Francisco de Zurbaran dans lequel elle consacra un chapitre aux oeuvres de son \ls Juan. Une quinzaine de peintures sont aujourd’hui considérées de la main du peintre, notamment grâce aux travaux de William Jordan, Peter Cherry et Odile Delenda.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales à Sydney [1] a récemment acheté un tableau du maître à la galerie Nicholas Hall qui l’avait exposé à la Tefaf en mars dernier. Il s’agit d’une nature morte avec une poire et des pommes jaunes posées sur un plat d’étain peinte vers 1641.

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Muted Old Master evening sales in London provide relative bargains but no fireworks
4 July 2024

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As a result, it was estimated at a relatively modest £3m to £5m—far below the levels of a fully autograph work—and backed by a third-party guarantee. Though some knowledgeable dealers felt the painting was more Botticelli than studio, on the night it sold to a single bid from the guarantor for £3.4m.

“If you wanted a ‘Botticelli’, that was a good one. They don’t grow on trees,” said the New York-based dealer Nicholas Hall. “No Russians is a problem,” he added. “Sotheby’s Botticelli would have done better with Russian bidding.” That Botticelli was not the only buyer’s market deal made at Sotheby’s. A very big, but very majestic set of six mid-18th century Giandomenico Tiepolo frescoes of The Celebrated Deeds of the Porto Family of Vicenza were knocked down to an online bidder for £1.9m. They had sold at Sotheby’s 11 years ago for £2.8m.

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The Hub of the World: Art in Eighteenth-Century Rome
May 2024 issue

When the American painter Robert W. Weir went to study in Rome in 1825, he and a friend, the sculptor Horatio Greenough, dined in an eating house known as the Bacco di Lione, which, he noted, had previously been the ‘painting room’ of Pompeo Batoni (1708–87). This led Weir to observe that ‘the art had been long declining in Italy, and poor Batoni was the mere smoke after the last flame had flickered out’.1 It was to combat this widely shared negative opinion that the painter turned art historian Anthony M. Clark (1923–76) devoted his scholarly and museum career to eighteenth-century Roman art and especially Batoni, on whom he wrote a catalogue raisonn., edited and published by Edgar Peters Bowron after Clark’s untimely death.2 To mark the centenary of Clark’s birth, the art dealers Nicholas Hall and Carlo Orsi presented an exhibition in Hall’s gallery in New York devoted to him and his wide-ranging influence (closed 23rd November 2023).

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Women Artists Take Centre Stage at TEFAF Maastricht
11 March 2024

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Elsewhere, there are museum-quality works by a host of Old Masters, including van der Ast, Cranach, Fragonard, Hals, Tiepolo, Titian (a rare 12-panel woodcut print, The Submersion of Pharoah’s Army in the Red Sea, for which Manhattan dealer David Tunick is asking “about a million”), Turner, van Dyck, and Zurbarán, the latter an exquisite still life, priced at $2.8 million by Nicholas Hall, also of New York.

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At TEFAF Art Fair, Museums Make Up for Shrinking Private Sales
9 March 2024
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Curators were also drawn to the hauntingly minimal 1641 canvas, “A Pear and Apples on a Pewter Plate,” by the Spanish still life painter Juan de Zurbarán, priced at $2.8 million with the New York dealer Nicholas Hall. Others marveled at a rare group of paintings by Nazarene artists — 19th-century Germany’s precursors to the English Pre-Raphaelites — on the booth of the Texas-based Gallery 19C.

“You don’t get the historical depth or the quality at any other fair,” said Eric Lee, the director of the Kimbell Art Museum, Dallas.

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The Old Master trade is still seeking new ways to restore it to life
22 January 2024

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Nicholas Hall, the New York-based Old Master dealer, says this Getty purchase helped give a contemporary art collector the confidence to buy Mengs’s even less obviously commercial Portrait of Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico (1758-59), which was included in the museum-quality exhibition The Hub of the World: Art in Eighteenth-Century Rome, at Hall’s Manhattan gallery in autumn 2023. “The buyer had never heard of Mengs,” says Hall, “but the painting’s symphony of reds appealed to him. ‘This seems modern to me,’ he said.” That ecclesiastical portrait by Mengs, priced in the region of $750,000, was one of 12 works in the show that sold for between $5,000 and $1.5m, according to Hall.

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From Rome, with art
December 2023

There was a time–not so long ago–when the term “art market” identified a loosely connected group of scholars, museum professionals, dealers, and collectors, many of whom knew each other well. It was a world whose coordinates corresponded chiefly with London’s Bond Street and New York’s Fifty-seventh Street, although there were lesser outposts in Paris, Florence, and Zürich. Wildenstein (referred to, not necessarily with affection, as “The Big W”) had three palatial venues: in Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires. Common to all these enterprises were their sumptuous “viewing rooms,” invariably outfitted in plush red velvet, with distinguished-looking staff in striped pants and morning coats hovering in attendance. A more important similarity was these firms’ stock-in-trade: earlier European paintings and works of art, often significant, even on occasion of absolutely capital importance–works that, had they not survived, would have imposed by their absence a different narrative on contemporary art history…

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An opportunity to cultivate one’s art-historical garden was afforded New Yorkers by a recent exhibition arranged in the elegant duplex premises of the Nicholas Hall gallery. Celebrating eighteenth-century Rome and its art, the show was a combined effort by the gallery’s eponymous owner and the Milan dealer Carlo Orsi…

A New York tra Batoni e Vanvitelli rivive così la Roma del Settecento
11 Novembre 2023

Esposte 50 opere nel tributo allo studioso Anthony M. Clark, a cent’anni dalla nascita

《Sono finalmente arrivato in questa capitale del mondo!》 È il primo novembre 1786 quando Goethe annota l’arrivo a Roma. Proprio da quell’emozione, che è diretta espressione della filosofia del Grand Tour, prede spunto – e titolo – la mostra The Hub of the World: Art in Eighteenth-Century Rome, organizata da Carlo Orsi in collaborazione con la galleria newyorchese Nicholas Hall, dove sarà ospitata fino al 30 novembre. 

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Reason and Imagination
James D. Balestrieri
1 November 2023

It’s hard to imagine a time when the Settecento, as the 18th century in Rome is often termed, wasn’t at least an occasional subject of interest to museums and art historians. In the not too distant past, however, the Settecento was viewed with disdain or ignored altogether as a kind of decadent shadow of the Baroque and High Renaissance. “The Hub of the World: Art in Eighteenth-Century Rome,” on view at Nicholas Hall in New York through November 30th, reminds us of this period of disdain and of the individual who was most responsible for revivifying the Settecento—scholar, curator, collector, and artist Anthony Clark (1923–1976)—the centennial of whose birth is being celebrated this year.

NYC-Arts
Season 2023 Episode 29
presented by Philippe de Montebello

A look at “The Hub of the World: Art in 18th Century Rome” on view at Nicholas Hall Gallery. This exhibition celebrates the legacy of influential museum professional, Anthony M. Clark. In collaboration with Galleria Carlo Orsi in Milan, the two galleries have gathered a diverse selection of works that provide a rare opportunity to experience the cosmopolitan appeal of 18th century Rome.

La Città barocca vista con gli occhi di Anthony M. Clark
17 ottobre 2023

L’arte a Roma nel Settecento attraverso lo sguardo e gli studi del grande conoscitore americano Anthony M. Clark (1927-1976), di cui ricorre il centenario della nascita. Ecco il fulcro della mostra “Hub of the World: Art in 18th-Century Rome”, organizata dalla Gallerica Carlo Orsi in collaborazione con la galleria newyorkchese Nicholas Hall, nella sua sede sulla East 76th Street a New York dal 6 ottobre al 30 novembre….

Anthony Clark, preda di un incantesimo, il Settecento romano
15 Ottobre 2023
Alvar González-Palacios

Fu nei secondi anni cinquanta che Anthony M. Clark cominciò a calarsi, quasi esistenzialmente, nell’arte romana del Settecento: proscritto dalla scuola longhiana in una stagione tutta caravaggesca, quel raffinato insieme di tardo barocco, ‘barocchetto’ e nuovo classicismo doveva essere riscoperto da un occhio esterno, occhio di cultore votato alla ricerca serissima e perfino capziosa, l’occhio dell’americano di Filadelfia, nato nel 1923 e morto, a soli 53 anni, nel 1976.

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Start spreading the news… Spotlight on three exhibitions taking place in New York – starting with 18th century art from Rome
9 October 2023
Frances Allitt

Nicholas Hall’s latest exhibition, with a luxurious collection of objects, celebrates the man who single-handedly launched a vogue for 18th century Roman art among mid-century US collectors.

Running until November 30 at Hall’s New York gallery, Hub of the World: Art in 18th Century Rome celebrates the collector and museum professional Anthony Clark (1923-76). Held in collaboration with Galleria Carlo Orsi of Milan, the show brings together more than 60 works including Old Master paintings, drawings, sculptures and decorative objects….

A New York la Roma del ‘700
6 ottobre 2023

Da Oggi fino al 30 novembre la mostra “Hub of the World: Art in 18th Century Rome” nella galleria newyorchese Nicholas Hall sulla East 76th Street….

Around the galleries – Gallery highlights
October 2023
Isabella Smith

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To mark the centenary of Anthony M. Clark’s birth, Nicholas Hall is holding an exhibition that honours the taste of the connoisseur and scholar, who did much to influence collecting habits in 1950s and ’60s America. Sixty work by artists who either lived in or visited 18th-century Rome appear alongside Clark’s notebooks, white a catalogue of essays by art historian offers further insights.

Il Settecento romano di Anthony Clark
ottobre 2023

Il recente volume di Thomas Clement Salomon edito da Skira intitolato Musealia americana ripercorre la storia dei pionieri nella fondazione dei principali musei degli Stati Uniti. I loro nomi sono ormai divenuti leggenda. Si identificano con le istituzioni delle città che hanno beneficiato del loro mecenatismo, da New York a Boston, da Washington a Detroit e Baltimora, solo per citarne alcuni. Un’epopea d’Oltreoceano che si è sviluppata dalla fine del XIX secolo influenzando non solo le dinamiche del collezionismo e dell’antiquariato internazionale, ma sopratutto dato linfa all’incremento parallelo degli studi storico-artistici. Non tutti i suoi maggiori interpreti sono noti ai più, spesso la loro conoscenza si restringe all’ambito degli specialisti. Con un colpo d’ala d’ampio respiro, l’iniziativa promossa da Carlo Orsi in collaborazione con la rinomata galleria newyorchese Nicholas Hall, sconfina con sagacia dalle strettoie della ricera accademica e ne mette in luce le premesse e l’evoluzione, dedicando dal 6 ottobre al 30 novembre una mostra a un grande studioso del Settecento romano, quale è stato Anthony Clark.

Carlo Orsi e Nicholas Hall rendono omaggio ad Anthony Clark
4 October 2023
Ada Masoero

Nel XVIII secolo Roma era, di nuovo, la capitale mondo. A garantirlo è un testimone d’eccezione, Goethe (1749-1832), che ci visse tra il 1786 e il 1788. A Roma confluiva la futura classe dirigente dell’intera Europa, in quell’ineludibile viaggio di formazione che era il «Grand Tour», e a Roma giungevano artisti da ogni dove, non solo perché c’era la committenza della Chiesa, dell’aristocrazia locale e dei ricchi e colti viaggiatori ma, soprattutto, perché qui c’erano le radici della nostra civiltà. Che offrivano linfa a una nuova e splendida creatività.

A «quella» Roma, e a un suo studioso d’eccezione, Anthony (Tony) Clark (1923-1976), nel centenario della nascita, rende omaggio la mostra intitolata (con Goethe) «The Hub of the World: Art in Eighteenth Century Rome» che Carlo Orsi e Nicholas Hall presentano a New York nella Nicholas Hall Gallery (17 East 76th Street) dal 6 ottobre al 30 novembre: 56 opere raffinatissime, con dipinti di artisti come Jakob Philipp Hackert e Anton Raphael Mengs, di Gaspar van Wittel (Vanvitelli) e Claude Joseph Vernet, di Jacques-Louis David e Anton von Maron, di Joshua Reynolds e di Pompeo Batoni, pittore, quest’ultimo, cui Clark dedicò anni e anni di studi, riscoprendone la grandezza e promuovendone la conoscenza nel mondo.

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State of the Art Market: Old is New Again and Neo Old Masters
30 June 2023

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Major commercial galleries have been making the classic-to-Contemporary connection, too

In the fall of 2018, David Zwirner worked with Old Master dealer Nicholas Hall to stage “Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art,” a show that curated more than 90 works by artists spanning eras and genres; featured artists ranged from Hieronymous Bosch, Francisco de Goya, and Gustave Moreau to Francis Alÿs, Michaël Borremans, and Lisa Yuskavage, among others.⁶ In December 2022, as a part of Master Drawings New York, Sprüth Magers dedicated its Upper East Side space to exhibiting the work of living artist Karen Kilimnik alongside Renaissance paintings, works on paper, and sculptures dating from the 17th to 19th centuries.⁷ 

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Are young collectors buying Old Masters? Dealers at TEFAF Maastricht bank on changing tastes
13 March 2023
Amy Shaw

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The veteran British dealer Nicholas Hall noted how a growing pool of elusive cross-over collectors are being influenced by fashion designers such as Jonathan Anderson, Raf Simons and Vivienne Westwood, who have all appropriated Old Master motifs. Non-traditional collectors, he added, are attracted to “weird subject matter”, such as Hieronymus Bosch’s fantastical landscapes, skulls and witches, as well as “modernistic still lifes”—particularly 17th-century Dutch and Spanish pictures—portraits which are “direct and challenging” and works by “the very big names: Leonardo, Rembrandt etc”.

On the opening day of Tefaf, Hall reported selling a work by the German Baroque painter Johann Carl Loth for “under $500,000” to a European collector, who—along with those from the East Coast of the US—remain the main drivers in the Old Master market.

Hall said he has tried to put a “more contemporary twist” on his presentation at the fair this year, though he added that while “Old Master pictures look great with contemporary and Modern works, they don’t thrive in a white cube.” In 2018, Hall collaborated with the contemporary dealer David Zwirner on an exhibition titled Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art. Among the works Hall sold were a late Titian, to a contemporary buyer, as well as several pieces of Mediaeval sculpture and a Goya drawing. Future collaborations are reported to be in the pipeline. Hall would appear in good company. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the contemporary Saatchi Yates galley is launching an Old Masters division.

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Dealers expect discerning audience at Tefaf in tightening market for Old Masters
05 March 2023
Gareth Harris

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New York dealer Nicholas Hall says that Tefaf is the best showcase for a triptych depicting the adoration of the Magi (c. 1525-30, price undisclosed) by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a leading exponent of the Antwerp Mannerist school, because of the calibre of collector who attends. “The underdrawing establishes that the master himself was directly involved in the production of this beautifully preserved panel,” Hall says. The market for Old Masters — broadly covering the period from 1300 to 1800 — is seemingly in good health, buoyed by the avalanche of acclaim for the blockbuster Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Dedicated January sales in New York delivered mixed results, but there were some healthy headline lots, including Bronzino’s “Portrait of a young man with a quill and a sheet of paper” (c. 1527), which fetched $10.7mn with fees at Sotheby’s. At Christie’s, dual portraits of a mother and daughter by Goya set an auction record for the Spanish painter, selling for $16.4mn with fees.

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Medici Masterpieces and Chinese Camels
09 March 2023
Huon Mallalieu

Mr Hall’s painting by Franz von Stuck (1863-1928), Listen­ing Fauns (Fig 4), measures 47in by 44in including the frame, which was designed for it, and his fauns are far from demure. Carl Jung noted that many of Stuck’s works drawn from mythology perfectly express a ‘mixture of anxiety and lust’. He influenced such avant-garde painters as Klee and Kandinsky, but his own art came to be thought old-fashioned and his reputation suffered because Hitler admired him. Since the 1960s, he has come back into favour.

Brexit woes contribute to slim Old Master sales in London
09 December 2022
Scott Reyburn

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“It was what it was,” says Nick Hall, an Old Master dealer based in New York, commenting on the quality on offer at Christie’s. Hall, like many trade observers, see how difficult it has become for Sotheby’s and Christie’s to present high quality evening sales of Old Masters in post-Brexit London in both June and December. In New York, where many of the key buyers are concentrated, the two main houses now concentrate their best consignments into one auction in January. “That’s where the market is,” Hall adds.

Sotheby’s and Christie’s New York-based experts were conspicuously active taking telephone bids at these latest London sales, which was hardly surprising, given the dollar’s current strength against sterling.

At Christie’s, Manhattan-based staffers Francois de Poortere and Jennifer Wright took competing bids for Jean-François de Troy’s superb quality, The Reading Party, signed and dated 1735, showing a trio of fashionably dressed friends entranced by a book being read aloud in a forest glade. De Troy might not be many people’s idea of an A+ artist, but this was certainly an A+ quality French 18th-century painting. De Troy made just 11 of these painstakingly observed tableaux de mode. Entered from the collection of the English industrialist Lord Weinstock, it topped Christie’s sale with a price of £2.9m against a low estimate of £2m.

“De Troy’s tableaux de mode are among the most beautiful French rococo things,” Hall says. “And they’re very rare. Whoever bought that, bought a very good painting.”

It says a lot about the current state of the art market—and our culture generally—that this museum-quality masterpiece of 18th-century French painting made exactly the same auction price in dollars ($3.6m) as the record paid in March for a two-year old canvas by Flora Yukhnovich inspired by an 18th-century French painting.

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Digging deep for Old Master treasures: mixed results at London sales as dearth of ‘good material’ continues
08 July 2022
Scott Reyburn

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“Short on quality, short on interest,” says Nicholas Hall, a dealer in Old Master paintings based in New York, commenting on Sotheby’s Wednesday evening auction. Last month at the rescheduled TEFAF fair in Maastricht, Hall confirmed the private sale of a rare circa 1495 Vittore Carpaccio panel of the Virgin and Child With Saints Cecilia and Ursula, with an asking price of between $10m and $15m. “It’s a gamble selling at auction, and people don’t like the odds at the moment,” adds Hall, a former specialist at Christie’s.

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It was a similar story with the small, ethereal Fragonard canvas, The Fountain of Love (around 1784), which hadn’t been on the market since 1988 and sold for £718,200, again on the telephone. “It was a bargain,” says Hall, who was one of several underbidders.

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A Grand Old Art Fair Returns, to a World That has Changed
27 June 2022
Scott Reyburn

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The presence of curators, conservators and donors from museums in Europe and the United States is a key draw for dealers to exhibit at TEFAF Maastricht. Representatives from some 20 U.S.-based institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, attended the fair, according to the TEFAF media office.

“American museums are primed to buy,” said the New York-based dealer Nicholas Hall, who specializes in high-end old master pictures. Hall was showing a superb “Virgin and Child With Saints Cecilia and Ursula,” from about 1495, by the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio. Consigned for sale from a private collection in the United States, it had been reserved by another American collector before the fair, Hall said, priced between $10 million and $15 million.

Since TEFAF’s equivalent sister fair in New York in the fall has been scrapped (though it still holds its spring fair for modern and contemporary works), TEFAF Maastricht was now “the one opportunity for dealers to put together a group of pictures to rival the auction houses’ old master sales,” Hall said.

Certainly Hall’s Carpaccio, an Artemisia Gentileschi self-portrait as Cleopatra with Heim of Basel at around $8 million and the late Goya canvas “St. Paul,” with the London-based Stair Sainty at $6 million seemed to represent a more impressive offering than Sotheby’s and Christie’s thin old master auctions in London in July.

Galleries bring out the ‘big guns’ for Tefaf Maastricht—but sales are slower than usual
27 June 2022
Jane Morris

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Nicholas Hall has brought a Vittore Carpaccio not seen in public since 1987, which will be included a major Carpaccio exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. in November. Madonna and Child with Saints Cecilia and Barbara, painted in the 1490s and showing the influence of Giovanni Bellini, is “an eight-figure sum”, Hall says, (believed to be between $10m and $15m). It was reserved by a private collector on the preview day. Dickinson, meanwhile, brought what is probably one of the most expensive modern works at the fair, an unusual double-side painting by Giorgio de Chirico. Mercurio e i metafisici, 1920, on one side and Il Ritornodel figliol prodigo, 1924, on the other, the price was undisclosed but believed to be around €12m….

Your starter for $10,000… New York dealer’s show includes an attribution challenge with a cash prize on offer
18 April 2022
Francis Allitt

Top-quality art – and a hefty cash prize – are up for grabs at a New York gallery this spring.

Nicholas Hall’s exhibition All That Glistens runs until May 20. It features 30 Old Master paintings on copper produced in Europe from 1560-1750.

The pictures appearing on loan and on offer include examples by major names such as Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) and Claude Lorraine (1600-82).

However, one key loan is unattributed. The Interior of the Linder Gallery… is a large work, 22in x 2ft 8in (56 x 82cm), painted in Milan in the late 1620s and is currently listed as the work of an anonymous Flemish artist. It depicts the impressive collection set up by a German merchant, whose scientific instruments and pictures by Brueghel and his school and similar artists are shown surrounding personifications of painting and drawing.

Over the years it has passed through the collections of the Viennese Rothschilds and Thomas Mellon Evans. And although a drawing in the Royal Collection attributed to Frans Francken the Younger bears a striking resemblance to the painting, so far any identification is up for debate.

Eager to rectify this unattributed state, the owner has offered $10,000 to the first person who can identify the artist.

It is a bit of fun in this prestigious show. The prize would only go so far in covering one of the works on offer, which range in price from $70,000 to seven figures.

Among them are a scene of Christ Bearing the Cross by Italian Baroque artist Guido Reni (1575-1642), a still life by Dutch artist Roelant Savery (1576-1639) and a landscape by the German artist Goffredo Wals (1595- 1638).

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Late Botticelli painting sputters at Sotheby’s Old Masters auction in New York, selling for $45.4m
Judd Tully
27 January 2022

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It is said that Botticelli became deeply religious late in life and a devout follower of the fiery doomsday preacher Girolamo Savonarola, producing late paintings that bore little resemblance to his more famed and sensual early work, such as The Birth of Venus (1485-86) and Primavera (1470s-80s), both housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

“It’s a controversial painting,” says Nicholas Hall, a New York old master dealer, about “which people feel strongly. There are those who don’t like late Botticelli and his Savonarola-esque phase, which is considered excessively pious and austere.”

The painting last sold at Sotheby’s London in November 1963 for £10,000 and was attributed in the late 1970s by leading Botticelli scholar and author Ronald Lightbown among the “workshop and school pictures”. Present day curatorial authorities, including Keith Christiansen of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lawrence Kantor of the Yale University Art Gallery, consider it an autograph work.

Given the single figure subject and date, it is hard not to think of Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi that sold at Christie’s New York in 2017 for $450.3m (with fees). With that in mind, the Botticelli looks like a bargain.

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Subtle and Finessed Depictions at the Master Drawings Fair
Seph Rodney
24 January 2022

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At Nicholas Hall I found a small drawing that was all swirling motion, making me think of the Italian Futurists, such as Giacomo Balla, and Duchamp’s brilliant deconstruction of human movement “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” (1912). The background literature tells me that this style of blocky figuration with no facial features was typical of draftsmanship in 16th century Italy which was influenced by the cubic system of drawing developed by Albrecht Dürer in his studies and illustrations of human proportion. Though faceless, there is still something uniquely elegant about the figures in this composition.

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Tefaf Online 2021
September 2021
Editorial Board

As The European Fine Art Fair opens its virtual edition, we talk to the collectors and dealers behind the scenes and follow the highlights

Designer Licheng Ling looks back at her first time visiting TEFAF
22 Jul 2021
TEFAF stories

Gray eminence
15 March 2021
Marco Grassi

On “Grey Matters” at Nicholas Hall

More than fifty years after his death, Roberto Longhi is still remembered as one of the greatest and most influential art historians to have practiced that discipline. Although neither generous nor benevolent as a mentor, he nonetheless inspired generations of students through his incandescent lectures at the University of Florence and especially through his equally scintillating publications. In 1950, Longhi created the perfect vehicle for his torrent of critical opinions and scholarly insights, all based on exhaustive research and sheer inspiration. He called his bi-monthly periodical Paragone Arte. It alternated with a sister publication dedicated to literature, Paragone Letteratura, which was run by his wife, Anna Banti, a writer of middling accomplishment.

In mere literal translation, the Italian word paragone means “comparison,” but as it applies to art it represents a philosophical construct with roots in classical dialectics. It is expressed most famously in Horace’s phrase ut pictura poesis (“as is painting, so is poetry”), pointing to how the two forms of artistic expression mirror and complement one other. The early Renaissance Florentine polymath Leon Battista Alberti retrieved the concept in his seminal De pictura, broadening it to include sculpture. Thereafter, the paragone became firmly established in European thinking, echoing through the later writings of Leonardo, Vasari, and Benedetto Varchi, down to the Enlightenment critic Gotthold Lessing.

Roberto Longhi would have greatly enjoyed visiting this recent exhibition at the compact, elegant Nicholas Hall gallery. With the intriguing title “Grey Matters,” the show comprises twenty-three items in various media: Limoges enamel, sculpture, drawing, and painting (on canvas, panel, and glass). The paragone we are asked to contemplate here is the one evinced by the dichotomy of painting and sculpture, referred to by Alberti when he squarely judged painting as superior: painting is able to depict and imitate sculpture, in contrast to the impossibility of the reverse. Giotto, in an early dramatic demonstration of such imitation from 1310, decorated the entire lower register of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua with fictive marble “sculptures” representing the Virtues and Vices.

The representation of white marble in painting is normally achieved with the technique of grisaille—the French etymology here being from gris (gray). It is an elegant strategy that makes use of a very limited range of hues within the black/white register, with occasional polychromatic reflections. One of the most sublime examples of the technique is the pair of Annunciation panels by Jan van Eyck, now housed in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. The two “sculptures” stand in fictive architectural niches, their reflection subtly hinted against the polished black basalt backgrounds; a tour de force on a scale no larger than fifteen by nine inches. Had Alberti seen these two treasures, he would have considered them a perfect corroboration of his thesis.

“Grey Matters” greets the visitor with a mild surprise: three first-rate examples of sixteenth-century Limoges enamelware, their sparkling figural decoration in a counterpoint of white, blue, and gold, though grisaille nonetheless. Slightly more conventional but of greater significance artistically are three oil-on-canvas paintings with simple, uncluttered compositions. They are rare specimens of ephemeral, Renaissance arte povera:decorations that were originally part of elaborate floats, or carri, which were drawn through the city on festive occasions, such as for the triumphal re-entry of Pope Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici) to his native city in 1516. The artist is Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci), and one of the three paintings is notable as being a recent addition to the artist’s canon.

Somewhat off-theme, but of greater consequence, are two three-quarter length male portraits: one by the master (Pontormo), the other by his pupil (Bronzino). The sense of gravitas they exude mirrors the deadly serious debates that were roiling the political and religious waters in the years straddling the Reformation. Pontormo’s sitter, Cosimo de’ Medici, was later installed in 1537 by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V as the Grand Duke of Tuscany, initiating a Florentine dynasty that would last into the eighteenth century. Cosimo created Europe’s first centralized, administrative state—a model perfected a century later by Cardinal Richelieu in the absolutist monarchy of Louis xiii of France and his successors.

No visit to the Florentine sixteenth century would be complete without a pause at Giorgio Vasari’s studio. He was the ultimate art insider and macher in the Florence of Cosimo I. An indefatigable writer, administrator, and teacher, he still found the time to cover, with febrile energy, thousands of square feet of Florentine walls and panels. Conceptual niceties such as the paragone were less important to him than Disegno (drawing). He emphatically wrote the word with a capital D, because Disegno was, in his scheme of things, the foundational principle of visual art. Not surprisingly, he went on to codify and promulgate his theories when he initiated the “Accademia del Disegno” in 1563. The academy’s founding signaled that artists were no longer humble artisans beholden to their guild, but academically trained professionals—a goodly notch higher on the social ladder. Again, as with the centralized administrative state, Florence provided the model for the French monarchy’s own Académie, an institution that survived into the nineteenth century and became the sworn antagonist of Impressionism. Unfortunately, Vasari is here represented by a largeish, unremarkable sheet that bears little trace of the artist’s usual vigor and creative energy.

Every exhibition should have at least one item with which, ideally, the visitor would like to abscond. “Grey Matters” is no exception, and, were there no consequences, the splendid Deposition sheet by Baccio Bandinelli would have been firmly secreted in this writer’s pocket. Bandinelli was a would-be Michelangelo and is chiefly remembered for a gigantic marble Hercules and Cacus still situated squarely in front of Florence’s municipal palace (the Palazzo Vecchio), where it was placed in 1534. Meant to remind the unruly citizenry that the Medici were now returned to power after their brief expulsion, the statue has remained the butt of irreverent jokes and criticism ever since its installation. Not only did it contrast with the nearby David, a symbol of the “free” and “republican” city, but Florentines were quick to note the artistic disparity between Michelangelo heroically carving away the marble to free the figure, allowing it to emerge from the block as one integral form, and Bandinelli adding as many as twenty separate pieces, as if he were molding clay. If this was seen as timid in the statue, there is not a tremulous line in the drawing. Its teeming figures, arrayed obliquely towards the viewer, are hewn with forceful strokes that heighten the drama of the narrative. The drawing is a rare and precious specimen of Cinquecento art.

The Paragone periodicals struggle on but are still being published, a rare survival in an art world ever more averse to comparative discipline, connoisseurship, and research. Unfortunately, galleries of Old Master art are similarly threatened. Luckily, Nicholas Hall, though the only remaining active gallery in New York for European Old Master paintings and drawings, is flourishing. Although there are still a handful of “private” dealers, Nicholas Hall distinguishes itself as a walk-in gallery with a selection of works always on view. Over the past few years, the gallery has mounted a number of interesting and provocative shows, of which “Grey Matters” is only the most recent. The exhibitions are documented by scholarly catalogues, always replete with information specific to the items on view as well as more wide-ranging articles that would fit comfortably in the pages of publications such as Paragone or The Burlington Magazine. Professor Dennis V. Geronimus, Chair of nyu’s Department of Art History, is the author of several essays that accompany this exhibition. Together, these essays trace the concept, origin, and development of the grisaille technique and constitute a veritable monograph on the subject.

Pontormo provides bright spark in a grey world
18 January 2021
Gabriel Berner

This recently discovered grisaille painting of Adam and Eve by the Florentine Mannerist artist Jacopo Carucci (1494-1557), known as Pontormo, is the centrepiece of a new exhibition of monochromatic works at New York gallery Nicholas Hall.

A prime example of the artist’s private work, the small painting is noted for its unusual grisaille technique (rarely used in Pontormo’s oeuvre) and the subject, which shows Adam and Eve at work after the fall of man with the first children, Cain and Abel, at their feet.

Burlington Magazine described it last year as a “major discovery for the art of the Florentine Renaissance” and it has already found a buyer for an undisclosed sum ahead of the show’s opening on January 25.

Titled Grey Matters, the exhibition is drawn from American museums and private collections and examines the concept of ‘paragone’ through Pontormo’s grisaille technique. Paragone was popularised by Leonardo da Vinci and sparked vigorous debates in Renaissance Italy concerning the superiority of painting or sculpture.

A range of artworks produced between late-15th century and early 16th century is for sale with prices starting in five figures.

Around the Galleries: Gallery Highlights – Grey Matters
January 2021
Editorial Board

At the heart of this exhibition is a group of grisaille paintings by Jacopo Carucci, better known as Pontormo, including several museum loans (Fig. 2). By displaying the sculptural renderings of figures on canvas alongside other grisailles by Pontormo’s contemporaries across Europe, as well as sculptures, stained glass and enamels, the exhibition considers them within the context of Renaissance pragone debates over the superiority of painting or sculpture.

Six-part documentary film about art collecting, released in mainland China in summer 2020. Based on Taiwanese original

AH-ART 啊! 藝術 (2017)
TAIWAN｜2017｜DOCUMENTARY TV｜6 episodes (30 mins/per)
DIRECTOR: Hao-hsuan Hsu
PRODUCER: Lee Yen Hsun
PRESENTED BY: Music Nation Ursa Major Limited

Interviews with Yuan Fang featured.

Messe schließt vorzeitig: Die Kunsthändler breiten ihr Angebot nun online aus
Christian Herchenröder
12 March 2020

Die Tefaf reagiert auf die Ansteckungsgefahr durch das Coronavirus und schließt diese Woche vorzeitig. Nun ist die Kunst nur noch im Internet zu entdecken.

Maastricht Wie Opernhäuser, Kunstpreisverleihungen und die Buchmesse entkommen auch die bildenden Künste nicht der Corona-Epidemie. In Italien sind die Museen schon seit Montag komplett geschlossen. In Deutschland bleiben laut Museumsbund die meisten Häuser noch offen. Bundesgesundheitsminister Jens Spahn rät zwar seit dieser Woche zur Absage von Veranstaltungen mit mehr als 1000 Besuchern. Aber nur in den ganz großen Häusern schlendern hierzulande so viele Menschen gleichzeitig durch viele Säle.

Wirklich betroffen wären damit nur Veranstalter von Blockbuster-Ausstellungen. Das Museum Barberini in Potsdam etwa steuerte die Besucher bisher über sein Ticketingsystem. Seit Donnerstag ist die Monet-Ausstellung bis zum 17. März geschlossen.
Bei internationalen Kunstmessen ist das Bild noch uneinheitlich. Die „Miart“ in Mailand, die „Art Paris Fair“, die „artmonte carlo“ und die „PAD Paris“ sind auf spätere Termine verschoben worden. Die „Art Cologne“und die „Art Brussels“ allerdings wollen noch ihren Termin Ende April halten.

Wie schnell sich Entscheidungen in diesen Tagen ändern können, zeigt ein Blick nach Maastricht. Die „The European Fine Art Fair“, kurz Tefaf, öffnete zwar in der vergangenen Woche wie geplant. Doch an diesem Mittwoch schloss sie dann vorzeitig. Ein italienischer Moderne-Händler war am Montag positiv auf das Coronavirus getestet worden. Seitdem ist das Angebot der Messe, die eigentlich bis Sonntag hätte laufen sollen, nur noch auf den Webseiten der Tefaf und der Händler einzusehen.

Clevere Aussteller haben zudem Videos versandt, die dem Kunstfreund aus sicherer Entfernung Einblick ins Angebot verschaffen. Die Tefaf ist seit ihrer Gründung ein unübertroffener Olymp des Altmeisterhandels. In der aktuellen Ausgabe bietet die Gemäldesektion zwar noch immer Spitzenqualität, aber der Händlerstamm hat sich stark verändert, die Geschmäcker haben sich verschoben. Die Moderne hat mit 59 Ausstellern die 55 Spezialisten Alter Malerei überflügelt.

…

Ein absolut fairer Preis sind die 450.000 Euro, die Nicholas Hall für eine brillante „Madonna mit Kind“ des in Leonardos Mailänder Atelier geschulten Giampetrino erwartet.

Art for Sale in Maastricht: Quality, Quality, Quality
Brian T. Allen
11 March 2020

Nicholas Hall is offering a painting that’s very Protestant. Pieter Saenredam (1597–1665) is best known for his interiors of Reformation-era Protestant churches. There, the art doesn’t inspire real, humble piety. Art depicting divinities was idolatrous. Good Protestants were in church to reflect, not to look at pictures. Saenredam’s Nieuwe Kirk in Haarlem, from 1658, shows the just-built church, white and entirely austere.

Still, it’s cool and serene. New England’s early Congregational churches have the same aesthetic, since the Puritans were Calvinists. They, too, abhorred tacky scenes of saints dripping blood all over the place. It’s very beautiful as well as very modern. I spent lots of time looking at this gem, which does have lots of color in it, but the colors are subtle grays, blues, and terra-cottas. It’s consigned, and the owner doesn’t want the price disclosed….

After Strong Opening Sales, TEFAF Maastricht Closes Early in Face of COVID-19
Samuel McIlhagga
11 March 2020

This year’s TEFAF Maastricht art fair closed early, at the end of the day Wednesday, after it was revealed that an exhibitor who’d attended the fair’s first three days had subsequently tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19). Though a Dutch health official asserted that the unnamed dealer “was not contagious during his time in TEFAF,” the fair’s organizers—in consultation with municipal and health authorities, as well as the MECC (Maastricht Exhibition & Conference Centre)—opted to end the fair four days early.

“Given the recent developments in the regions around Maastricht and increasing concerns, we no longer feel it is appropriate to continue as planned,” Nanne Dekking, chairman of TEFAF’s board of trustees, said in a statement.

A large gathering of demographically older buyers and sellers, like those who usually attend TEFAF Maastricht, had been a source of concern from the get-go. Nina Hartmann, chief marketing officer at TEFAF, told Artsy how cautious the fair was being from the outset: “I’m in a WhatsApp group chat with the mayor of Maastricht and we’re being very vigilant…we’re evaluating the situation daily.”

Despite the worsening global health crisis, the mood during the fair’s opening days was one of a concerted focus on the task at hand. “I don’t know anyone who isn’t pleased to be here. I know I am,” said Stephen Ongpin, whose namesake London gallery showed at the fair.

Most would have struggled to argue with Ongpin’s statement. This year’s fair featured objects ranging from ancient Egyptian statues to uber-contemporary design, with a large slate of European Old Masters holding center ground.

Biennale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze: per una settimana l’arte a Palazzo Corsini e nei i luoghi più rappresentativi della città
Editorial Board
July 2019

La Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze celebrerà i 60 anni di attività (1959-2019) promuovendo la prima “Florence Art Week” una settimana di eventi, mostre, performance ed incontri che coinvolgerà tutte le Gallerie fiorentine, dall’arte antica al contemporaneo.

“Un movimento” afferma Fabrizio Moretti, Segretario Generale della BIAF, “che prende avvio dalla Biennale e che farà partecipare tutta la città e i suoi ospiti alla settimana dell’arte. Coinvolgerà alcuni Musei di Firenze ma anche le realtà artigianali più prestigiose, le Gallerie d’arte di Via Maggio e Via de Fossi, le storiche strade dello shopping d’arte, così come le boutique di Via Tornabuoni e Ponte Vecchio, che proporranno eventi insoliti aperti a collezionisti e al pubblico in genere”.

La BIAF lancerà anche un nuovo “Premio per le arti decorative o di design” grazie alla sponsorizzazione di Ronald S. Lauder, che lo assegnerà nel corso della Biennale, su una terna di opere segnalate da un’apposita giuria. L’importo di Euro 25.000 consentirà il restauro di alcune opere d’arte decorativa appartenenti al patrimonio culturale pubblico.

Inoltre, al primo piano di Palazzo Corsini all’interno dell’Alcova, si potrà ammirare “UNIVERSO BARDINI”, un progetto espositivo a cura di David Lucidi sulla figura di Stefano Bardini “principe degli Antiquari”, dedicato non alla sua consueta accezione di mercante-collezionista, ma a quella di protagonista nelle vicende del collezionismo d’arte tra Otto e Novecento, del suo ruolo fondamentale per l’allestimento di importanti raccolte internazionali. Per l’occasione verranno esposte opere che oggi fanno parte del Museo Bardini, quelle che maggiormente rappresentano la sua estetica espositiva di attento collezionista e altre prestate da collezionisti privati e antiquari.

A Palazzo Corsini dal 21 al 29 settembre la 31ma edizione della BIAF Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze vedrà protagoniste 77 gallerie del panorama internazionale specializzate nelle più diverse discipline artistiche, tra cui 16 new entry, che sapranno affascinare con una ricercatissima selezione di opere i numerosi collezionisti privati, Direttori di Musei, Soprintendenti e curatori provenienti da tutto il mondo. La mostra ha per missione la promozione dell’arte italiana e del suo mercato. La qualità e la concretezza delle proposte d’arte esposte in mostra, insieme all’unicità del luogo, Palazzo Corsini affacciato sull’Arno e Firenze tutto intorno, sono gli elementi che la contraddistinguono e ne fanno la seconda manifestazione al mondo per l’arte antica.

“Il mio sogno – afferma Fabrizio Moretti, Segretario Generale – è che la BIAF possa portare alla luce tutte quelle opere che sono importanti documenti della storia dell’arte, grazie all’appassionato impegno di tutti i suoi galleristi, diventando così un punto di riferimento per il mercato dell’arte ma anche per un pubblico più vasto in Italia e non solo”.

ll progetto di allestimento, creato da Matteo Corvino appositamente per la BIAF 2017, come promesso, riserverà delle sorprese che ruoteranno principalmente intorno alla messa in scena degli spettacolari lampadari progettati da Carlo Scarpa e realizzati da Venini, della circonferenza di un metro e altri tre metri e mezzo provenienti dall’ex Teatro Comunale di Firenze, che saranno posizionati nei due ingressi con la collaborazione dei laboratori di alto artigianato di San Patrignano. Sarà inoltre valorizzata la cornice dei saloni barocchi per creare un inedito spazio espositivo in grado di far emergere la bellezza e l’unicità delle opere ma anche i luoghi accoglienti destinati ai momenti conviviali e di approfondimento.

I principali protagonisti del mercato mondiale dell’arte – tra i nuovi Simon C. Dickinson e Peter Finer di Londra, Nicholas Hall di New York, Galerie Canesso di Lugano e Parigi, la Galerie Sismann di Parigi, Galleria Continua di San Gimignano, la spagnola Deborah Elvira e Galleria Poggiali di Firenze – presenteranno una ricca selezione di oltre 5.000 opere. Tra queste segnaliamo:

Per la pittura: … l’olio su tela The Philosopher di Dirck van Baburen, datato 1618-19 circa, sarà esposto da Nicholas Hall; …

Firenze. A Palazzo Corsini la 31ma edizione della BIAF, che celebra 60 anni di attività
Editorial Board
July 2019

La Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze (1959-2019) promuove anche la prima “Florence Art Week” una settimana di eventi, mostre, performance ed incontri che coinvolgerà tutte le Gallerie fiorentine, dall’arte antica al contemporaneo

FIRENZE – Si svolgerà dal  21 al 29 settembre 2019 la 31ma edizione della BIAF, Biennale Internazionale dell’Antiquariato di Firenze. Protagoniste saranno 77 gallerie del panorama internazionale specializzate nelle più diverse discipline artistiche, tra cui 16 new entry.

La qualità e la concretezza delle proposte d’arte esposte in mostra, insieme all’unicità del luogo, Palazzo Corsini affacciato sull’Arno e Firenze tutto intorno, sono gli elementi che la contraddistinguono e ne fanno la seconda manifestazione al mondo per l’arte antica.

“Il mio sogno – spiega Fabrizio Moretti, Segretario Generale della Biennale – è che la BIAF possa portare alla luce tutte quelle opere che sono importanti documenti della storia dell’arte, grazie all’appassionato impegno di tutti i suoi galleristi, diventando così un punto di riferimento per il mercato dell’arte ma anche per un pubblico più vasto in Italia e non solo”.

Il Sindaco Dario Nardella, intervenendo alla presentazione di questa edizione,  ha sottolineato l’importanza della qualità espressa dalla Biennale: “Solo sulla qualità si può costruire una offerta culturale che non sia scevra anche dagli aspetti economici, Firenze è la città dove è nata la filantropia, dove è nato il collezionismo moderno, dove possiamo dire che sono nate le radici del moderno mercato dell’arte. Noi dobbiamo difendere il mercato dell’arte, quello trasparente, quello legale, quello che protegge e tutela la cultura, dobbiamo combattere con severità il mercato illegale, perchè è il mercato illegale che getta un’ombra su tutto il grande mondo del commercio dell’arte che non merita i pregiudizi che ancora esistono, esistono nel mondo degli intellettuali, nelle istituzioni e fra i legislatori, bisogna distinguere il mercato che fa bene al nostro al collezionismo, all’economia, che piace e che fa apprezzare l’Italia nel mondo, da quelle pratiche che sfruttano i beni culturali che nulla hanno a che vedere con il diritto universale di ogni individuo di fruire della bellezza di un’opera d’arte.”

ll progetto di allestimento, creato da Matteo Corvino appositamente per la BIAF 2017, come promesso, riserverà delle sorprese che ruoteranno principalmente intorno alla messa in scena degli spettacolari lampadari progettati da Carlo Scarpa e realizzati da Venini, della circonferenza di un metro e altri tre metri e mezzo provenienti dall’ex Teatro Comunale di Firenze, che saranno posizionati nei due ingressi con la collaborazione dei laboratori di alto artigianato di San Patrignano.

I principali protagonisti del mercato mondiale dell’arte – tra i nuovi Simon C. Dickinson e Peter Finer di Londra, Nicholas Hall di New York, Galerie Canesso di Lugano e Parigi, la Galerie Sismann di Parigi, Galleria Continua di San Gimignano, la spagnola Deborah Elvira e Galleria Poggiali di Firenze – presenteranno una ricca selezione di oltre 5.000 opere.

Tra le opere da segnalare in questa edizione

Per la pittura: una veduta del Redentor di Venezia, olio su tela del Canaletto (1697 – 1768) sarà esposta da Galleria Dickinson; da Matteo Lampertico sarà visibile l’olio su tela del 1716-18 Siface davanti a Scipione l’Africano di Giambattista Tiepolo; la Galleria Salamon presenterà una tempera su tavola a fondo oro con Madonna col bambino in trono fra sei santi recentemente individuata da Angelo Tartuferi come opera del pittore fiorentino Ventura di Moro(Firenze 1399 – 1486), datata 1430 circa; un olio su tavola con Sacra Famiglia con San Giovannino di Domenico Beccafumi (Siena, 1486 – 1551) sarà in mostra presso Galleria Orsi; Galleria Marletta porterà un olio su tela con cornice originale Venere educatrice di Amore di Pelagio Palagi (Bologna 1775-Torino 1860), del secondo decennio del diciannovesimo secolo; una tempera su tavola San Pietro Martire nella sua cella conversa con tre vergini (Agnese, Caterina e Cecilia) di Antonio Vivarini (documentato in Veneto 1440 – 1476/1484), opera del 1450 circa notificata nel 2006, sarà in mostra nello stand di Enrico Frascione; l’olio su tela The Philosopher di Dirck van Baburen, datato 1618-19 circa, sarà esposto da Nicholas Hall; Antonacci-Lapiccirella propone un doppio ritratto di Giovanni Boldini, fronteDonna con cappello e verso Donna nuda seduta, 1905 circa.

With loot from two veteran dealers and one artist, Christie’s Old Masters sales push $50m
Brian Boucher
May 2019

Despite overall headwinds in the Old Master auction market, Christie’s staged a day sale yesterday in the middle of New York’s Frieze week that London dealer Anthony Chrichton-Stuart praised as “unbelievably strong”, led by record prices of $10m for a commanding Jan Sanders van Hemessen double portrait and $6.5m for a brightly hued Juan van der Hamen y Léon still-life.

Strong bidding in the room and via phones led the house to a $40m sale (with fees) that included works from the veteran New York dealer Richard Feigen’s collection. The total came in north of the pre-sale high estimate of $34.1m; 79% of lots found buyers. Immediately following was a sale of 15 works from the estate of the venerated late dealer Herman Shickman and his wife Lila that brought $10.5m, just above the pre-sale low estimate of $9.9m, also with 79% selling.

The auction house overcame the principal challenge in the sector—finding high-quality material—by securing the dealers’ collections, a coup that carries cachet even though increasingly common. Also bringing a painting to the block Wednesday was artist Frank Stella, who offered the van Hemessen work from his private collection. Estimated at up to $6m, it soared to $10m after a ten-minute battle, selling to a phone bidder via the house’s Ben Hall. “Worth every penny,” New York-based dealer Nicholas Hall said after the hammer fell.

In addition to the record for van der Hamen (smashing his previous high, $1.1m) and the Hemessen record (his was $3m previously), Annibale Carracci’s Madonna and Child with Saint Lucy and the Young Saint John the Baptist fetched $6m, besting his previous high, $3.4m. Lorenzo Monaco’s The Prophet Isaiah, a pinnacle measuring just eight inches across from an altarpiece now at the Uffizi, realised $3.6, doubling his previous auction block high.

New York-based dealer Henry V. Zimet placed the winning bid on a Willem Kalf still life; the price, $2.8m, more than tripled Kalf’s previous record. All the same, Zimet felt he got a great deal. “We thought it might go for twice as much,” he told The Art Newspaper.

It was not all record-breaking results at this sale, however. A Luis Meléndez still life, estimated at up to $4m and touted as one of the star lots of the Shickman collection, was withdrawn from the sale and sold privately; a Fra Bartolomeo Madonna and Child tagged at up to $2.5m went begging.

Yet the overall strong sale comes on the heals of a lagging market. Per Clare McAndrew’s 2019 Art Basel market report, Old Masters brought just $905m at public sales last year, a number about in line with 2008 and 2009, but down drastically from a high of $2.13bn in 2011.

In addition to the problem of supply, dealers also face the need to augment demand by luring younger buyers. To bring new sizzle, Sotheby’s recently recruited Victoria Beckham, aka Posh Spice, to hype an Old Master sale. More soberly, dealer Nicholas Hall partnered with Modern and contemporary titan David Zwirner to mount an exhibition at Zwirner’s New York gallery last year. For its part, Christie’s has de-emphasised the “old” in Old Masters, rebranding its spring sales as Classics Week; to attract the social media audience, Old Master specialist Jonquil O’Reilly, who often focuses on the fashions and textiles in her paintings, recently staged an Instagram takeover of the fashion blog Man Repeller.

Un tableau d’Odilon Redon acquis par le musée de Boston
Bénédicte Bonnet Saint-Georges
April 2019

Acquisition – Boston, Museum of Fine Arts – Un être grimaçant, recroquevillé sur lui-même est assis devant une barque. Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Boston a récemment acquis, auprès de la galerie Nicholas Hall, un tableau d’Odilon Redon intitulé L’Ange du destin. Un ange sans ailes ni attributs. La barque néanmoins pourrait être celle de Charon traversant le Styx.

L’œuvre faisait probablement partie des dix-sept peintures vendues par Redon à Ambroise Vollard en 1899, identifiée comme celle qui représentait un « Mauvais ange accroupi, sorte de barque ou des ailes ».

On trouve dans cette toile plusieurs motifs récurrents dans le répertoire de l’artiste : la barque, mystique ou non, fut déclinée dans des couleurs chatoyantes, souvent au pastel ; le visage torturé du personnage, dont le crâne est traversé par le ciel, rappelle les figures littéraires ou oniriques de Caliban, du Gnome ou de l’Homme cactus. Quant à l’ange, il peut être guerrier, il est aussi déchu, souvent. Parmi ceux que peignit Redon, l’un, en 1875, obéit à une composition assez similaire à celle du tableau de Boston : la ligne d’horizon la divise en deux, la partie inférieure est peinte dans les tons bruns tandis que le ciel bleu est traversé par un nuage blanc ; dans les deux cas, la figure se trouve à moitié dans l’ombre, les bras repliés sur elle-même.

Ce tableau rejoint dans les collections plusieurs autres œuvres d’Odilon Redon, peintures et estampes.

Die Dame mit Katze macht Lust – auf Kunst
Walter Straten
March  2019

Die Dame ist ein echter Hingucker bei der Kunstmesse „The European Fine Art Fair“ (TEFAF) bis 24. März in Maastricht. Kokett schaut sie uns an und hält eine Katze im Arm, ein Symboltier für Verführung. Und Verführung ist ihr Beruf. Als Kurtisane im Florenz des 16. Jahrhunderts musste sie gelbe „Dienstkleidung“ tragen. Das Gemälde des Renaissance-Künstlers Antonio d’Ubertino, genannt Bacchiacca (1499 bis 1572), kostet bei US-Händler Nicolas Hall 850.000 Dollar. Auch zu sehen: Zar Alexander I. schenkte PreußenKönigin Luise ein dreifüßiges Tischchen. Für 780.000 Euro zu kaufen bei der Bremer Galerie Neuse. Und die Frankfurter Kunsthandlung Rumbler zeigt an ihrem Stand eine „Liebeswand“ mit erotischer Graik u.a. von Rubens und Rembrandt. Na, Lust auf Kunst bekommen?

Tefaf apre il suo scrigno delle meraviglie ai collezionisti di tutto il mondo
Marilena Pirrelli
March 2019

Maastricht, la giornata uggiosa di pioggia non dissuaderà i collezionisti dal visitare in anteprima i tesori offerti dal Tefaf, la 32ª fiera che apre le porte oggi alle 11 e ancora domani in anteprima solo per i collezionisti . Da sabato 16 marzo aprirà finalmente al pubblico fino al 24 marzo al MECC della cittadina olandese. La concorrenza sempre più agguerrita anche nel settore dell’antico, le incertezze sulla Brexit e la guerra dei dazi tra Usa e Cina avranno ricadute sulla fiera olandese? I collezionisti torneranno a comprare, nonostante le incertezze economiche? La commissione del vetting guidata da Wim Pijbes, rinnovata e priva ora di potenziali conflitti d’interesse tra galleristi, storici dell’arte e accademici, ha selezionato per rarità e qualità le opere offerte dai 279 espositori del Tefaf, di cui 38 nuovi, 13 nella sezione Modern dove troviamo per la prima volta Sprüth Magers e Pace Gallery, Galerie Gmurzynska (Stati Uniti), Simon Lee Gallery (Regno Unito), Almine Rech (Belgio), e l’italiana Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, specializzata in arte moderna dei maestri del XX secolo.

TEFAF Paintings….galleria americana Nicholas Hall, specializzata in dipinti e sculture degli antichi maestri e del XIX secolo.

Highlights from TEFAF Maastricht
Features editor
March 2019

TEFAF Paintings

NICHOLAS HALL
Portrait of a young lady holding a cat
ANTONIO D’UBERTINO VERDI, CALLED BACCHIACCA
(1499, Florence, 1572), Olieverf op paneel

Collecting – TEFAF Maastricht’s New Direction
Melanie Gerlis
March 2019
Highlights: a selection from Tefaf Maastricht
‘Portrait of a Young Lady holding a Cat’ (1525) by Antonio d’Ubertino Verdi, known as Bacchiacca, at New York’s Nicholas Hall Gallery

The Best of TEFAF Maastricht 2019
March 2019
Susan Moore

Man with a Turban, c. late 1620s
Jan Lievens (1607-74)
Oil on panel, 76.8 x 59.9 cm.
Nicholas Hall, Price on application

A discovery from a French private collection and hitherto unpublished or exhibited, this panel is a ‘tronie’, a type of painting favoured by both the young Lievens and his contemporary Rembrandt. The two shared a studio in Leiden – and sometimes the same models – for about five years until 1631. Often painted from life and striking in their physical features and exotic costumes, these imaginary character heads act as testimony to the artists’ technical and expressive prowess. Unlike Rembrandt’s tronies of the period, however, this example reveals the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti in its dramatic light, but it is the verde and variety of textures and techniques that mark it out. Turban and flesh are wrought by thick layers of impasto, while a web of fleshy folds and wrinkles are woven out of short, quick brushstrokes made in different directions. For the beard, the application of pigment is thin and the handle of the brush is pulled backwards through it to uncover a lighter ground and suggests wisps of hair that catch the light. Hall, a new exhibitor, will be presenting a group of tronies.

Editors’ Picks: 8 Great Art and Design Events This Week
Galerie Editors
October 2018

8. Fantastic Art Revisited: Exhibiting Old Masters and Contemporary Art
The Kitchen

Nicholas Hall, a specialist in the field of Old Masters and 19th-century art, and Yuan Fang present a fascinating symposium in conjunction with “Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art” at David Zwirner. Curators and directors from some of the world’s leading institutions—the Met, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, MoMA, J. Paul Getty Museum—will discuss the current exhibition and the legacy of Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s 1936 MoMA exhibition, “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism.”

Where: The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street

When: Saturday, October 27, 12:30–6 p.m.

Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art
Thyrza Nichols Goodeve
October 2018

“The reader’s hesitation is therefore the first condition of the fantastic.”
—Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic, 1970

Part 1

The pages of my worn copy of Todorov’s The Fantastic (1970) are stuck together, like the uncut pages of my grandmother’s 19th century Balzac collection—each page must be separated by hand as I read because my late bunny Mrabet treated the edges as a morsel to carve into with his sharp little teeth. There is something satisfying and right about re-reading one of the greats of Russian Formalism on the topic of the fantastic, accompanied by the rivulets of my bunny’s desire.

Part 2

What exactly is the fantastic since it travels deep into history in both literature and visual art? Like Paul Schrader’s famous definition of film noir, 1 it is less a genre than a deep structure of mood and tone. Todorov’s definition of the fantastic suggests a liquid presence of mind where “the real is confronted by the inexplicable.” It is also a subset of “ambiguous vision”—a state of perception experienced by the reader and viewer which is brought about by the literary or visual style of the work. In the fantastic, the reader/viewer is placed in a state of suspension—a perpetual hesitation—between belief and disbelief. Such a moment of hesitation is even more pronounced in visual art, as the precise Euclidian realism of Dalí, de Chirico, or Piranisi for that matter, is what is so unsettling. Walking through Endless Enigma one’s mood bounces between eye-tearing ecstasy, expulsive hilarity, aesthetic delirium, pain, and, ultimately, the sensation of oh how we have forgotten to marvel, to experience wonder, wrought from giddy shock and astonishment. What I mean is, when we do experience astonishment, it is mostly in the form of rage rather than whimsy. In this sense, although it is from the 15th century, no artwork reflects the present like the limestone gargoyle one meets in the first room. The root of the word “fantastic” is from the Greek word phantastikos, which means “able to create mental images”—and surely this gargoyle is the mental image of our time. There he sits and lingers in your mind after you leave, a lumpy head of limestone pulling at its mouth in disbelieving anguish.

Part 3

The collaboration between Zwirner Gallery and curator Nicholas Hall is a reprisal of Alfred Barr’s landmark exhibition and catalogue, Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism presented at MoMA in 1936. 2 Barr’s genius and to some, blunder, was to situate these brazen revolutionary movements within the context of five centuries of fantastic art. Surrealism and Dada are as enduring in the 21st century as any movement of the 20th century, especially the former, whose modes of psychological dissociation, alternate realities dressed up as actual places, mixed with irrepressible desire, dreams, and the fortuitous revelations of chance continue to offer moments of radical disorientation. And when paired here with lives and subjectivities of monsters, wholesale renunciations of rationality, leaps into the unconscious, the supernatural, temptation, wonder, and horror over eight centuries—the result is, well, fantastic.

Following Todorov, what makes it so powerful is how the viewer is submerged in the fantastic as a mode of subjectivity via the chance associations each person’s mind makes as he, she, or they travel through the show. While the curation is extraordinary, part of what makes it so is the range of connections there are to be made, not just in the intelligence and juxtapositions of each room, but overall, as one leaves the exhibition. Walking down 20th street with the mental image of Victor Hugo, Lisa Yuskavage, an anonymous 15th century stone cutter, Titian, Kerry James Marshall, Salvatore Rosa, Gustave Dore, James Ensor and so many others across eight centuries dancing a mad jig in one’s head. Or the way Piranisi’s Carceri d’invenzione (Imaginary Prisons), 1749/1761, nightmarish vision of a labyrinthine prison feels today more like a realistic depiction than some hyperbolic imagination. It is why the exhibition both refuses and enlivens the notion of historical context—in a pawky move, each artwork is presented without title, only the artist’s name (if available), date of birth and death. In this way, we experience every one of the works for their visual intensity separate from any possible meaning embedded in the title. (Of course, there is a complete checklist available at the desk but I suggest going through once before consulting it.)

Part 4

From the moment you enter the gallery, you are put into a trance. Directly across the room in the main gallery, a 72 1/4 × 67 7/8 × 1 5/8 inch version of the central panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights made in 1515 by a contemporary follower of Hieronymous Bosch draws one to it like a siren. (Bosch worked on his from 1503-1515.) Never having seen the original, I can’t compare the two nor do I want to, nor will you. Spend an hour just taking in the endless enigma of the brush’s exquisite precision as it paints oddities one can now see up close—and indulge in the capture of details with your iphone—such as: a crowd of naked white male bodies, some standing erect, others balancing on their hands in headstands, formed in a close circle, holding—with hands and feet—a perfectly round and rotund strawberry textured bird body marked with what looks like a mirrored design, its long chicken legs akimbo. Atop the bird’s head is an upside down headless figure, arms and legs popping from a reddish what? A black bunny rests on the long thin beak of the bird. As one’s eye travels down the beak, another white naked man with his back to the viewer holds the end of the beak. He appears to be leading this “event” (as opposed to creature) somewhere. And this is but a single small detail of one painting. Upstairs one finds more paintings from the studio of Bosch teeming with images like a house made out of the bum of a man whose red, anguished head pops out the other end pierced with arrows.

And yet, perched on a white pedestal near The Garden of Earthly Delights copy, sits a preposterous timepiece sculpture made of gilded bronze, silver, and paint by an anonymous sculptor from Augsburg (1590-1600), it seems straight from the imagination of a late Renaissance Matthew Barney, crossed with a circus act traveling through Dante’s Inferno. (It is titled Automation clock in the form of the Chariot of Bacchus) Here is a round belly of a man with a clock in his stomach, a bowl of fruit on his chest, a bell on his head, holding a scepter of some sort which, when the clock struck the hour, once moved back and forth. This funny, fat man is carried on an elaborate four-wheeled wagon drawn by elephants who are whipped by a cad of a devil—his scepter-trident held aloft, his expression demonic—as two satyrs playing panpipes sit contentedly on the elephants. Two bears standing upright are positioned on opposing sides of the cart, playing flutes. I guffawed when I saw it—as I did with many of the works—Salvador Dalí’s Landscape with Telephones on a Plate (1939), even Giacometti’s Woman (Flat III) (c. 1927-29) brought a chuckle in the context of so many strong, fatal, demonic, and just plain outrageous portrayals of women by artists from Lisa Yuskavage, Edvard Munch, Titian, and Salvatore Rosa’s unforgettable La Strega (The Witch) (c. 1646).

Part 5

As a work (which in a way it is), Endless Engima convulses the eye and mind. It challenges one’s cognitive and art historical vision while recalibrating both. For instance, Odilon Redon’s haunting figure in L’Ange du Destin (The Angel of Destiny) (c. 1900), or James Ensor’s biting yet whimsical Skeleton’s Warming Themselves (1889) placed nearby a small gray and white painting of a human skeleton walking casually down an urban street—absent of its left radius, ulna, and hand bones—painted, surprisingly, by Francis Alÿs (London, 2005), or the madly beautiful Extensive coastal landscape with the calling of Saint Peter by Herri met de Bles placed in the same room as Michaël Borremans’ Fire from the Sun (2017) depiction of humanity crawling on all fours. With all of these works, worlds previously unknown come into view. Intellection is activated in the space of the marvelous and convulsive beauty Breton loved so much. The abstract fantastic bursts forth in Sigmar Polke’s blast of black, purple, and everything related3 hangs near a huge mixed media assemblage on plywood head by Wallace Putnam from 1936 (the piece was also in the original 1936 exhibition). As one looks at Kerry James Marshall’s study of dignity and violence, Portrait of Nat Turner with the Head of His Master (2011), it becomes evident that the hesitation between the real and the inconceivable is the very subject of his portrayal, for Turner is not a monster but a man. Decapitation is also the subject of another work exhibited in the same room. It is Titian’s depiction of Herodias (I thought it was Salome) holding John the Baptist’s head in a bowl.4The energy, force, and moral clarity of the act is embodied in her posture—she holds the head in a bowl yet stands back from it in disgust; her head is turned to the side with an expression of both pride and satisfaction. No monster is she, but, like Nat Turner, an effective and triumphant executioner. But it is her hands which drive the visual force of the image—they are ghost images; unfinished white blurs that grasp the sides of the bowl yet disappear against the solid bowl in unfinished hesitation. And yet, in the middle of the same room sits Robert Gober’s Untitled (2000-2001), a creepy-uncanny concoction made of wood, willow, beeswax, and human hair with silver-plate cast. I could go on but instead…

JUST GO.

If there is anything negative to tag onto this review, it is that the exhibition is only up until October 27th. But those who are not in New York, or who miss the show, can look forward to the forthcoming fully illustrated catalogue published by David Zwirner Books which will include new essays by Dawn Ades, Olivier Berggruen, and J. Patrice Marandel. There is also the symposium with Nicholas Hall and Yuan Fang to be held at The Kitchen on October 27th. 5 RSVP to Sara Land  +1 212 772 9100  [email protected]. Hope to see you there.

Notes

1. The original MoMA catalogue is available on the book shelves across from the reception desk, a gesture by the curator and gallery which is generous and smart. I recommend looking at it after one has gone through the exhibition once. To return with Barr’s initial purpose in mind is as cognitively inspiring as is taking in the exhibition with one’s 2018 mind in tow.
2. Arcimi Boldi (1984), a play on the name of the great Renaissance fantasist Giuseppe Acimboldo (who is in the show). In the brochure which accompanies the Engless Enigma, Polke is described as having “experimented with different abstract techniques and unconventional, often chemically based materials, creating paintings whose compositions shift depending on the viewer’s position.”
3. For an extensive discussion of this painting and other works, see Nicholas Hall, Nemesis: Titian’s Fatal Woman, 2018 accessed October 11, 2018 http://www.nicholashjhall.com/attachment/en/58f7681b02a937e9492b12c5/Publication/5b884cf5f7c038a02900dc2c
4. Participants will include Olivier Berggruen (independent art historian and curator), Till-Holger Borchert (Director of Musea Brugge, Bruges), David Freedberg (Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art and Director of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, Columbia University, New York), J. Patrice Marandel (independent art historian and curator), Richard Rand (Associate Director for Collections, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), Hannah Segrave (PhD candidate in Baroque Art History, University of Delaware, Newark), Luke Syson (Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Chairman of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), Oliver Tostmann (Susan Morse Hilles Curator of European Art, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut), and Anne Umland (The Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Curator of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York).
5. Paul Schrader, “Notes on Film Noir,” 1972.

Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art
Mary Ann Caws
October 2018

It is a fantastic feeling to have been here before, as we surely have, and to return here refreshed. In 1936 Alfred H. Barr, Jr. brought his Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism to the Museum of Modern Art, and traces of it survive and are now not just resurrected but, well, remembered. The present recall and revision set the same non-limits on the time and geographical framing, and so this exhibition is gratifyingly wide-ranging, from the twelfth-century to right now in 2018. The point of it all is of course how we re-look at something as squishy as the imagination and its inventions, and how we resituate the range of items we are considering in relation to the present moment and however we conceive of the contemporary avant-garde.

Here are some parts that riveted my walking about. First, the left eye of Gustave Moreau’s The Poet and the Siren of 1893. That unblinking and totally domineering glance would transfix anyone, let alone a bedraggled exhausted poet so small by the gorgeous vine-wrapped right thigh of the siren, whose corresponding hand dangles over the poor poet’s forehead, as that poetic finger immerses itself in the water, languid between the corals so vividly red on the left and right and all about the water. Beyond this, opens a bright lavender and blue play of waterfall, rocks, and river.

Extricating myself from the fronds, I felt towered over by Leonor Fini’s two-part panel of Painting and Architecture of 1938–9. If the little palette on one figure’s finger bespeaks the art part, the crisp angles of the five triangular forms on the other do the architectural measurement proud. Now her architectural title sends me off to de Chirico’s 1927 The Archaeologists with the mannequin figure slumped over with columns and ruins all bedangling, the columns matching exactly the angle of the mannequin’s fingers, a peculiar echo.

Among the more recent works, let me single out Sigmar Polke’s play on the great Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, here signaled as Arcimi Boldi (1984). What a complicated tribute in its colors: red, green, black, purple, etc, as in its wealth of materials, “acrylic, artificial resin, lacquer, and dispersion,” the latter as in that great dark blob whose claws reach out wildly down and around.

Surrealism loves contrasts: take Piero di Cosimo’s joyful, peaceful, flowery, leafy and fruity Finding of Vulcan on the Island of Lemnos of 1490 and from twenty-five years later, a follower of Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, with its upside-down figures, extruding themselves from various vegetables, intermingling with the birds and large and small fish, some in improbable dwellings, and no one is in repose. Hands and feet and naked bodies and animals are crossed and writhing.  Hundreds of tiny figures astride horses, pigs, donkeys, ostriches, camels, and goats form a procession around a central pond, where more assorted bodies are trapped.

We could dwell in the wet of some of these as in Roberto Matta’s In the Center of the Water (1941), where the focus seems to come to rest on a bed-type shape so that the surrounding forms might well be part of dream, as in the celebrated surrealist position between night and day, sleep and waking.

Strangely calm is William Blake’s The Grave Personified of 1805, both in the face and the feet of the angel, and also in the lovely wings spread out. ‘Tis a truly sweet grave.

Salvador Dali’s preparatory drawing, Vulcain et Vénus of 1941, with multiple indications about the costumes and how the black is intertwined with the ivy on the legs, and its loud refusal of reproduction, is indicative of the care he took with detail, precisely a care we might miss in his extravaganzas.

Among my favorites was James Ensor’s 1889 Skeletons Warming Themselves. Two standing figures, dressed in the elaborate theatrical costumes treasured by his family upstairs from his Ostend studio while skulls lie to the side, and one pokes engagingly out from the doorframe. Some skeletons too. The trappings of culture are not forgotten, as a violin and a palette lean against a stove as if to give the only heat possible.

My other favorite is Kay Sage’s gorgeous and yet spare 1940 I Walk Without Echowhere a bright road leads up between two dark hillsides to a cliff while a shadow slices into the brightness, quite like the melancholy that slices into Sage’s writing and being, that sense of doom from even before she lost her beloved painter husband, Yves Tanguy, and her subsequent suicide.

How strangely and wonderfully does this eight-century experience end, with Francis Alÿs’s skeleton quietly tiptoeing  off sight and untitled, in a 2005 oil on canvas on panel, comparable to Michaël Borremans’ Fire from the Sun (2017) with its tiny naked figures scurrying about on an immense stage-like scene, on oil on canvas and on cardboard, as if the material were, in both cases, to compensate for the quiet unliveness and the small size of the unadorned actors. The avant-garde here carries its own weight on tiptoe, continuing the enigma.

Exhibitor mix shaken up for TEFAF Maastricht 2019
Frances Allitt
October 2018

A review of TEFAF Maastricht’s selection protocols has led to a major shake-up in next year’s exhibitor list.

Thirty-eight new exhibitors are included in the list of 276 dealers attending the March event (for the 2018 edition, there were 16 out of a field of around 270), representing nearly a fifth of the fair.

“As part of the continued drive by the organisation as a whole towards modernisation and change, this year TEFAF introduced a new selection protocol for TEFAF Maastricht, which has led to a number of new dealers being invited to join the fair,” said TEFAF chairman Nanne Dekking.

…

Other arrivals are spread across the other sections including seven in Antiques, six in Paintings (including Nicholas Hall) and three in Ancient Art.

An Enigma Solved: Old Masters and Contemporary Artists Mix Together Well at David Zwirner
Paul Jeromack
September 2018

In my many years of reporting on exhibitions and auctions, I have scoffed at the increasingly frequent assertion from members of the trade that collectors of contemporary art have branched out into Old Masters, finding the combination as palatable as chalk and cheese. Now even the Frick Collection in New York is planning to install contemporary art among its Vermeers, Rembrants and Veroneses. Yet it took David Zwirner’s current exhibition, Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art organised in collaboration with the Old Master dealer Nicholas Hall, to demonstrate how the possibilities of blending the old and the new can be an exciting, even inevitable development in collecting.

Taking its cue from Alfred Barr’s landmark 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada and Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art, Endless Enigma finds common ground between artists separated by centuries, through 90-odd works—some from museums and private collections, but most for sale.

The first gallery, a surprisingly playful excursion in the representation of the nude, is dominated by a full-size, 16th-century copy of the central piece of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and a churning millwheel of four push-pull nudes representing the Four Elements (1611), by the little-known Flemish Baroque painter Louis Finson (recently acquired by the Blaffer Foundation in Houston). These are comfortably joined by Louise Bourgeois’s Nature Study (1984), a silvered bronze kunstkammer object of a multi-breasted headless figure; Les Baigneuses (1959), a grimly determined group of nude swimmers by the underrated Leonor Fini; and paintings by René Magritte, Gustave Moreau, as well as two large canvases by Lisa Yuskavage of aggressively confrontational female figures. Everything works.

A particular pleasure of the show are its discoveries of little known and anonymous artists, notably Mask of the Traveller (1936), a powerful plywood assemblage by Wallace Putnam which featured in Barr’s original Fantastic Art show (and is now owned by David Bowie’s estate), with its seemingly random application of found street objects anticipating Robert Rauschenberg’s assemblages that would come 25 years later. Fantastiques (around 1830-40), a group of 25 watercolours of abstract splashes transformed with a carefree pen into dreamlike stews of unrelated figures, is attributed to the caricaturist Jean-Jacques Grandville, but seems to me to be the work of a talented unfettered outsider artist of the period.

Piero di Cosimo’s extraordinary The Finding of Vulcan on the Island of Lemnos (around 1490), on loan from the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford—in itself reason enough to see the show—shares a room of the natural surreal with three boxes by Joseph Cornell from 1950; two life-size grisaille allegories by Leonor Fini of Painting and Architecture (1938-39), swaggering figures festooned with tools of their craft; and The Wings of Augury (1936), a dainty yet commanding mixed-media depiction of Daphne by the little-known British Surrealist sculptor Eileen Agar. Agar’s fantastical image made of wood, bronze, faux-jewels and feathers would be well appreciated by the eccentric Piero, who possessed an almost obsessive interest with the minutiae of the natural world, as seen in his carefully rendered birds and trees.

A room themed around images of the afterlife is anchored by James Ensor’s great Skeletons Warming Themselves (1889) from the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, joined by a ghostly oil on cardboard of Carnival Street Musicans by Jose Gutierrez Solana (around 1906); London (2005), a small panel by Francis Alÿs of a merry skeleton rattling a fence with a shinbone; a similarly sized panel by Michaël Borremans Fire From the Sun (2017), where sluggish figures aimlessly crawl in the heat; and an impression of Martin Schongauer’s The Temptation of St Anthony (around 1475).

Aided by both the uniformity of the graphic medium and their absence of strong colour, a small room of prints and drawings offers perhaps the smoothest transitions between Classic and Modern, with drawings by William Blake, Victor Hugo, Francisco de Goya, and Odilon Redon’s cheerfully disturbing Head of a Cyclops (around 1880), joined by Black Herald (1924), a delicate work by Paul Klee. In its heady blend of Old Masters, Modern and contemporary, Endless Enigma is not an exhibition to be seen and processed at once, but repays several visits for all its quiet relationships to be explored and engaged. And once again—everything works.

Garden of Earthly Enigmas
Marco Grassi
September 2018

Any New Yorker with a long enough memory will remember when the neighborhood west of Tenth Avenue between Fourteenth and Twenty-third Streets was a semi-deserted cityscape of warehouses, taxi garages, and auto repair shops. In the kind of dramatic reinvention for which our city is famous (think of “Soho” and “Tribeca”) this district, known also as “West Chelsea” has become a throbbing engine of the contemporary art market. Gritty, utilitarian buildings that had as their only feature an abundance of cubic feet have been converted—often at the hands of “name architects”—into a succession of sleek and blindingly white exhibition spaces that might well be the envy of many museums.

No one has contributed more to this transformation than the contemporary über-dealer David Zwirner. Now operating out of two huge back-to-back venues (on Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets) in addition to his original premises on East Sixty-ninth Street, Zwirner has prepared an interesting and quite unexpected surprise for visitors to his Twentieth Street location. Here, they will find—thoughtfully and elegantly arranged—a provocative selection of more than 130 paintings and works of art that span from the fourteenth century to the present, their connecting thread being clearly explicit in two words of the show’s title: “enigma” and “fantastic.”

This rich serving of mostly Western image making was selected by Nicholas Hall, a distinguished connoisseur and dealer of European paintings, whose own gallery is at 17 East Seventy-sixth Street. He collaborated with David Leiber, a director of the Zwirner Gallery, and they are to be commended not only for obtaining on loan a number of celebrated items, but also for ferreting out from deep in the “woodwork” lesser-known pieces of equal distinction. There are a number of bona fide masterpieces, thus bowing to our contemporary obsession with fame and the superlative. The star in this category is, hands down, a monumental depiction of Herodias (or Salome) proffering the severed head of her victim on a silver trencher by Titian (yes, Titian). A bound and illustrated booklet prepared by the emeritus Cambridge scholar Paul Joannides is available to allay any skepticism of the attribution. But more importantly, there is the picture itself, fresh from a judicious recent conservation campaign and now dominating its space with the unmistakable gravitas of the great Renaissance master.

Were it not for the rare pleasure of savoring up-close such a distinguished work, its presence in this “enigma” context might ostensibly derail the show’s narrative. In fact, the message conveyed by the image could not be less enigmatic or more explicit: in effect, in today’s terms, it is virtually a perfect #MeToo poster. If the Titian thus misses the intended thematic profile of the exhibition, there are some further 130 works that sharply define and amplify Hall’s brief. According to his introductory notes, these works “explore the ways in which artists have sought to explain their world in terms of an alternative reality drawn from imaginations, the subconscious, poetry, nature, myth, and religion.”

The large and intriguing Garden of Earthly Delights (ca. 1515) by a contemporary follower of Hieronymus Bosch quite appropriately serves as the show’s “title page,” greeting the visitor upon entering the gallery with its bizarre and whimsical world depicted as an imaginary fantasyland. The viewer easily loses himself in a sulphurous landscape teeming with lithe, joyful nudes cavorting among scores of gnomic creatures; it is decidedly enigmatic, but humorously non-threatening. Beyond this cheerful welcoming introduction, there are images that elicit far darker emotions. One of the most harrowing is an over-life-sized depiction of an old, screeching harridan simply titled The Witch(ca. 1645).She is completely nude, on her knees and gesticulating wildly. Only a leafy branch extending over her groin denotes the artist’s (Salvator Rosa) seventeenth-century sense of propriety. Otherwise, the vision is starkly and arrestingly modern, à la Francis Bacon using a different palette.

Not surprisingly, James Ensor never fails to unsettle. His work included here, Skeletons Warming Themselves (1889),is, at the same time, a witty scherzo and a grim memento mori: can there be warmth in death?—hardly a question that Giorgio de Chirico posed himself in 1927 when painting L’Archeologo. Here, there is no beginning or end to life; the anthropomorphic sculptural figure is derived from a combination of classical prototypes now frozen in time and space by its creator. Again, as with the Titian, the thematic justification for the picture’s inclusion seems tenuous. On the other hand, we benefit from being able to admire an absolute and seldom-seen masterwork. The harsh calligraphy of de Chirico’s highly prized, earlier, “metaphysical” period is here replaced by a sumptuous, feathered brushwork that recalls Savinio, the artist’s brother. More importantly, the painting long predates the sloppy, “neo-Baroque” concoctions that de Chirico churned out in the post-war decades, presumably to pay the rent.

This important exhibition will benefit from a fully illustrated scholarly catalogue with essays by, among other specialists, J. Patrice Marandel, Olivier Berggruen, and Dawn Ades. There will also be a symposium on “Fantastic Art,” organized by Nicholas Hall and Yuan Fang, at The Kitchen (across the street from Zwirner Gallery on Nineteenth Street) on October 27.

Marco Grassi is a private paintings conservator and dealer in New York.

Seven Shows to See Right Now in New York
Rainey Knudson
September 2018
..

Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art
David Zwirner
Through October 27, 2018

This show is ridiculous. It has a Titian. It has the Kimbell Art Museum’s James Ensor painting of skeletons warming themselves by a fire. Is it a museum show? Are we shopping? Who cares: they’ve got Gustave Moreau, Sherrie Levine, Leonor Fini, Jean-Jacques Grandville and Eileen Agar in the same few rooms together. A wonderful show of weird/macabre/darkly funny art, it’s inspired by the legendary 1936 exhibition Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism at MoMA. This is loose, delightful fun the kind of which most museums only dream of having.

Hockney’s Heights: Price Versus Value.  Plus: Art and Advisers Go Back in Time
Melanie Gerlis
September 2018

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Modern and contemporary art galleries are stretching their definitions back in time this season. Last week, London’s Michael Werner gallery opened a show of work by the 19th-century Burgundy painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (until November 10). Meanwhile, in New York, David Zwirner gallery opened Endless Enigma, a show organised with the Old Masters and 19th-century specialist Nicholas Hall. Works in the mostly selling exhibition span the 12th-century (a limestone grotesque head) to a 2017 Michaël Borremans painting (until October 27).

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Endless Enigma: Eight Centuries of Fantastic Art
Time Out Editors
September 2018

You don’t get more museum quality than this show, drawn from international collections, which explores artistic treatments of dreams, the subconscious and the fantastical from the 12th century to the present. Contributions by a hit list of art-historical heavyweights—Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Hieronymus Bosch, Goya, Ensor, Picasso, Duchamp—are joined by works from contemporary artists such as Sherrie Levine, Luc Tuymans and Lisa Yuskavage.

7 Examples of Fantastic Art Through History
Elena Martinique
September 2018

Throughout centuries, artists have been trying to explain the world around them in terms of an alternate reality, creating fantastic art drawn from imagination, fantasy, the subconscious, poetry, nature, myth, and religion.

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Let’s take a look at the list of seven fantastic art pieces that will be on view as part as the exhibition Endless Engima.

Titian – Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist

The greatest painter of 16th-century Venice, Tiziano Vecellio known as Titian experimented with many different styles of painting, embodying the development of art during his epoch. Recognized by his contemporaries as “The Sun Amidst Small Stars”, he profoundly influences not only painters of the Italian Renaissance, but also future generations of Western art.

Created around 1515, the painting Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist reinterprets the legend of Salome and her mother’s hatred of John for his preaching against her. It has been suggested that the head of John the Baptist might be a self-portrait and that Titian was alluding to his private life with the model, which is believed is the same used in the work Dresden Venus.

Lisa Yuskavage – Rorschach Blot

An American artist, Lisa Yuskavage is widely associated with a re-emergence of the figurative in contemporary painting. She is best known for seemingly ignoble subjects depicted with classic, historical techniques. Her exquisitely painted canvases are often visually paradoxical.

Created in 1995, the work Rorschach Blot features the strange and haunting figure placed against the bright yellow background which speaks of sunshine and sweetness. The position of the figure creates a sinister echo of the world of the child and the circus within this highly sexualized context, blurring the lines between human and inanimate.

Raymond Pettibon – No Title (And Such Complicated…)

An American illustrator and cartoonist, Raymond Pettibon is known for his comic-like drawings which convey intelligently disturbing, ironic messages. Using ink and paper, he creates works which are always rebellious against the system. Many of his works are featured on a range of album covers.

In the early 1990s, Pettibon created a spectacular series of Gothic cathedrals. The work No Title (And such complicated…)from 2014 evokes this series, with its experimentation with color and line and text so small as to be barely visible.

Marcel Dzama – Hope Until Death

A contemporary artist from Canada, Marcel Dzama is best known for his fantastical pen-and-ink figure drawings. Often rendered in a muted color scheme of earthy greens, reds and browns, Dzama’s works feature slender women, cowboys, talking trees, and animals, among other characters.

Created in 1987, the work Hope Until Death is a surrealistic tableau featuring a centrally placed three-eyed female head and a range of characters from popular culture.

Contemporary follower of Hieronymus Bosch – The Garden of Earthly Delights

One of the most notable apocalyptic painters of the world and one of art’s first visionary geniuses, Hieronymus Bosch is celebrated for his detailed and symbolic narratives in biblical-themes fantasy landscapes populated by fantastical, and often macabre creatures.

Bosch’s fantastical scenes remained enormously popular throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. One of his contemporary followers rendered his celebrated painting The Garden of Earthly Delights. Intricate in its symbols, it depicts themes addressing history and faith.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo – A Reversible Anthropomorphic Portrait of a Man Composed of Fruit

An Italian Renaissance painter, Giuseppe Arcimboldo is known for his intricate paintings, which combined inanimate or found objects into kaleidoscopic “composite heads”. His portraits of human heads made up of vegetables, fruit and tree roots, were greatly admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of fascination today.

The work A Reversible Anthropomorphic Portrait of a Man Composed of Fruit is one of his most famous works. It is still debated among art critics if these works were whimsical and full of riddles or the fantasy product of a deranged mind.

Piero di Cosimo – The Finding of Vulcan on the Island of Lemnos

A Florentine painter of the Italian Renaissance, Piero di Cosimo is most famous for the mythological and allegorical subjects he painted in the late Quattrocento. He combined the straightforward realism of his figures with an often whimsical treatment of his subjects, creating the distinctive mood in his works.

The work The Finding of Vulcan on the Island of Lemnos depicts a story of Vulcan, the god of fire and the blacksmith in Roman mythology. When he was thrown down from Olympus by his father Jupiter, he landed on the island of Lemnos in the Aegean where he was looked after by the inhabitants. In the work, he is shown being helped to his feet by nymphs.

中国美术馆的未来，首届“美术馆2050”研讨会的三个亮点
Sarah Forman
July 2018

在过去的十年间，中国的公立与私人美术馆数量急剧上升。然而，大众对艺术机构应抱有怎样的期望并没有达成共识。今年6月，以“展望新的制度模式：本世纪中叶的中国文化景观”为主题的首届美术馆2050研讨会在上海龙美术馆举行。在研讨会上，来自世界各地的演讲人聚集在一起讨论艺术机构快速发展的形势。此外，还关注一直被忽略的美术馆组织结构及管理的问题。虽然在讨论众多宽泛的问题时很难有明确的答案，但我们可以从研讨会中总结出三点精华来进行分享。

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中国的美术馆在介绍国外艺术史方面有很大的灵活性

西方艺术史的叙事尚未在中国建立，这也为本土的艺术机构提供了以创新方式来展示历史作品的可能性。比如美术馆可能会以符合当代观展习惯的方式来悬挂大师的作品；或者围绕有数百年历史的艺术素材来开发主题性的展览，而不是沿着一个线性的、艺术史时间线上的某一点问题进行专研。这样的展览策略对中国的美术馆尤为重要，因为即使是最顶级的艺术机构，通常情况下都没有足够的关于西方美术的史料；所以他们的大部分展品不得不向其他机构借展或者经过漫长的购买过程。

方圆是纽约古易画廊（Nicholas Hall）的项目总监，她指出卢浮宫阿布扎比的主题展览是中国的美术馆可参考的模式。卢浮宫阿布扎比不是按照艺术史的发展进程来展示作品，博物馆通过12个主题性画廊呈现超越欧洲中心且具有全球视野的展览；这样做打破了百科全书式的博物馆习惯将作品按照时间段划分的做法。方圆以关注母性主题的展馆为例，在这里，你能看到“一座法国14世纪刻画“圣母与孩童”的象牙雕塑；公元前800-400年间古埃及女神伊西斯（Isis）哺育孩子的铜制雕像，以及一座19世纪产于刚果民主共和国的木质孕妇雕像，”这些不同时期的作品都被放置在一起进行展示。

在方圆看来，中国的美术馆没有大量西方作品馆藏也许能激发新的可能性。和其他参与讨论的发言人一样，方圆认为缺少馆藏的情况可以让本国的策展人发挥创造力，而这些创新的想法也能让西方机构受益。

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The Leonardo effect: Old Masters are back en vogue with a record Joseph Wright sale the latest high spot
Colin Gleadell
December 2017

There has been some discussion in the past few weeks as to whether the $450 million (£336 million) paid for Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ might have a tonic effect on the wider Old Master market which had been in danger of slipping from view.

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A highlight at Christie’s was a masterpiece of northern European mannerism by Bartholomeus Spranger. The painting had been looted by the Nazis, and was returned last month to the victim’s descendants. The painting was chased by New York dealer Nicholas Hall, but sold for six times its estimate to a Belgian collector, who is repatriating his country’s cultural history and spent £4.5 million at the sale on artists born and working in Antwerp.

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Sky News Tonight
Dermot Murnaghan
November 2017

A recently salvaged and restored Leonardo da Vinci painting has sold or a record-breaking $450.3 million at Christie’s New York. Nicholas Hall interviewed by Dermot Murnaghan on Sky News Tonight With Dermot Murnaghan on November 16, 2017.

Lost Leonardo painting had tangled path to $450 million sale
Jennifer Peltz
November 2017

NEW YORK (AP) — Just a dozen years ago, a worn, touched-up, old painting of Christ went for less than $10,000 (8,450 euros) at an estate sale. On Wednesday, it was auctioned for a record-breaking $450 million (380 million euros) as a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci dubbed “the Last da Vinci” or the “male Mona Lisa.” Years of painstaking cleaning and study led scholars to authenticate it as Leonardo’s roughly 500-year-old “Salvator Mundi,” Latin for “Savior of the World.” But some experts are stunned at the jaw-dropping price for a painting with a patchy history and heavy restoration.

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The high price, easily a record for a work of art at auction or in a private sale, surprised even experts. But Old Master paintings expert Nicholas Hall said Thursday it’s understandable that the painting commanded intense interest from bidders and the public.

Leonardo is “completely in a class of his own as a mind, as a myth, as an artist,” said Hall, a former Christie’s official who now runs a New York gallery. “There was and is this huge, genuine interest in this artist, and the story behind this painting — and the painting.”

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Editors’ Picks: 17 Things to See in New York This Week
Sarah Cascone
October 2017

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8. October Art Week on the Upper East Side
As TEFAF New York rolls back into town for its Old Masters edition, October Art Week returns for its second outing, with 19 participating galleries on the Upper East Side. Among the expected highlights are a small exhibition of works by 17th-century Italian Baroque painter Carlo Maratti at Nicholas Hall (17 East 76th Street), and Gabrielle reprisant (1908), a portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir of his family’s longtime nanny, at Hammer Galleries (32 East 67th Street).

Location: Various locations
Price: Free
Time: Opening reception, 5 p.m.–9 p.m.; other times vary by gallery

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Dealers Mix Modern furniture with Old Masters in New York: Nicholas Hall and François Laffanour pair up on Upper East Side
Brook Mason
July 2017

The New York-based Old Masters dealer Nicholas Hall, who previously served as the international chairman of Christie’s Old Masters and 19th-century department, is now collaborating with the Parisian mid-century design gallerist François Laffanour. The pair are showing Modern furniture alongside European Master paintings and sculpture in the top two floors of a townhouse just step away from the Carlyle Hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“I now have more than a dozen American clients who are collecting both 20th- and 21st-century design,” Hall says of the cross-period purchasing. “It’s all part of a growing trend.” He points to the architect Peter Marino, whose holdings of Italian and French Renaissance sculpture were featured in London’s Wallace Collection in 2010, as having an enormous influence on collectors. “There has been a decided ripple effect,” Hall adds.

At the gallery, a gold ground Madonna and Child by Pellegrino di Mariano, from around 1460, is juxtaposed with a unique wild cherry table by Charlotte Perriand dating from the 1940s.

“To me it’s important to show my holdings in a new light and Old Masters with Perriand as well as Pierre Jeanneret make the perfect conversation,” says Laffanour, who has placed design pieces in the collections of MoMA and the Metropolitan. “If I could afford it, I would own a Piero della Francesca and a Botticelli and place them along side the high points of French Modernist design in my own home,” Laffanour says.

Hall continues the collaborative spirit next autumn, when he is working with the Modern and contemporary art fealer David Zwirner to stage an exhibition devoted to 500 years of art. “That’s just another way I am reaching out to collectors,” Hall says.

‘Basquiat or Bust’: Led by a History-Making Basquiat, Sotheby’s Notches a $319 Million Sale: The price doubled Basquiat’s previous auction record.
Brian Boucher
18 May 2017

A Jean-Michel Basquiat painting rocketed to $110.5 million on Thursday night at Sotheby’s New York, smashing the artist’s previous record and carrying the house to a $319.2 million total. Thanks in large part to the Basquiat, the postwar and contemporary art auction outperformed its pre-sale estimate of $212–278.6 million. (Final sales prices reported by the auction house include the house’s premium; presale estimates do not.) Of the 50 lots in the sale, 48—or 96%—were sold.

Shortly after the sale ended, Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa, founder of e-commerce giant Start Today and virtual mall ZOZOTOWN, announced via Instagram that he had bought the painting. He placed the winning bid through a Sotheby’s specialist after an 11-minute contest.

Auctioneer Oliver Barker opened the bidding at $57 million, and Sotheby’s Adam Chinn and a few discreet bidders in the room drove the painting up to $68 million over three and a half minutes. “Oohs” and “aahs” could be heard as a new bidder jumped in at $69 million. Before long, it became a head-to-head battle between Maezawa, bidding by phone, and the sole remaining bidder in the room, dealer Nicholas Maclean, a co-founder of the New York and London based gallery Eykyn Maclean.

The staggering $110.5 million price represented not only a record for Basquiat himself, but also a record for any work by an American artist at auction, and the second-highest price ever achieved for a contemporary work at auction.

The canvas reportedly came to the house from Lise Spiegel Wilks, the younger daughter of real-estate magnate Jerry Spiegel and his wife Emily. The work had been virtually unseen since it last appeared on the market in 1984. The buyer at the time paid just $19,000 for the work, which was made during the most coveted period of the artist’s short career.

Maezawa is no Basquiat neophyte. He set the artist’s previous record price in 2016, when he laid down $57.3 million for another 1982 work at Christie’s New York. Both paintings will eventually reside in a private museum Maezawa plans to build in his hometown of Chiba, Japan. “When I first encountered this painting, I was struck with so much excitement and gratitude for my love of art,” Maezawa wrote on Instagram. “I want to share that experience with as many people as possible.”

There were a few other major prices achieved. Roy Lichtenstein‘s Nude Sunbathing (1995) sold within estimate for $24 million (est. $20–30 million) after a minute-long contest between Sotheby’s contemporary art head Grégoire Billault and Amy Cappellazzo, chairman of Sotheby’s Fine Art division. But the Lichtenstein, like a number of the high-profile works in the sale, was guaranteed (either by third parties or the auction house itself), so its success was hardly a surprise.

Basquiat was not the only artist to set a record, either. New auction highs were notched for Jonas Wood, Wolfgang Tillmans, Mira Schendel, Blinky Palermo, and Takeo Yamaguchi.

The evening’s total presale estimate of $212–278.6 million is similar to that of Sotheby’s equivalent postwar and contemporary sale in May 2016. Without the Basquiat, however, the evening would have looked very different. If Sotheby’s had not secured the reportedly late consignment, the pre-sale estimate would have come in at $152 million—$50 million less than any of Sotheby’s May sales over the past five years.

According to sources familiar with the matter, the house, with support from outside parties, secured the Basquiat late in the consignment process with a guarantee, which buoyed the low estimate into vastly more presentable territory. (A Sotheby’s spokesperson declined to comment on when the work was consigned, but noted that half the lots in tonight’s sale sold above their high estimates.)

The sale followed a challenging night for the house on Tuesday, when the cover lot of its Impressionist and Modern sale, an Egon Schiele estimated at $30–40 million, was withdrawn just before the auction began. As Nicholas Hall, a Christie’s veteran who recently opened his own gallery on the Upper East Side, noted, Thursday’s sale was truly “Basquiat or bust.”

Can the Old Masters be Relevant Again? 
Robin Pogrebin
August 2016

Old masters, new world.

At Christie’s over the last few weeks, two experts in old master paintings and drawings quietly left the auction house.

Their departures followed a year of spotty sales, in which the values of works by old masters — a pantheon of European painters working before around 1800 — fell by 33 percent, according to the 2016 Tefaf Art Market Report.

At a time when contemporary art is all the rage among collectors, viewers and donors, many experts are questioning whether old master artwork — once the most coveted — can stay relevant at auction houses, galleries and museums.

Having struggled with shrinking inventory and elusive profits, auction houses appear to be devoting most of their attention and resources to contemporary art, the most popular area of their business.

“They want to be associated with the new and the now,” said Edward Dolman, chairman and chief executive of Phillips auction house, who spent much of his career at Christie’s chasing works by old masters but now focuses on contemporary art.

“We have no intention of selling old masters pictures or 18th-, 19th-century pictures, because these markets are now so small and dwindling,” he added. “The new client base at the auction houses — and the collecting tastes of those clients — have moved away from this veneration of the past.”

A shortage of old master treasures, fewer up-and-coming old master specialists and public attention on the highest-selling pictures (which are in the contemporary market) are partly responsible for the shift in emphasis.

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The art world is making adjustments, juxtaposing old masters alongside contemporary artists in exhibitions, galleries, art fairs and auction sales. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is planning a $600 million wing for contemporary and modern art; in March, it filled its temporary satellite, the Met Breuer, with unfinished works from the 15th century to the present, presenting Renaissance masters like Titian and Rembrandt alongside contemporary artists like Brice Marden and Kerry James Marshall.

Last year, the museum started an online series called “The Artist Project,” in which contemporary artists talk about historical works at the Met that inspired them — like John Currin on Ludovico Carracci’s 1582 oil on canvas, “The Lamentation.”

“When you hear contemporary artists talking with passion about the genius of old masters — that, we assume, will help open up the historical fields to new audiences,” Thomas P. Campbell, the director and chief executive of the Met, said, “to understand that all art was once contemporary.”

Similarly, the Art Institute of Chicago’s recent show of old master portrait prints explored how artists like van Dyck influenced contemporary artists like Chuck Close. “We brought printmaking into the present,” said James Rondeau, the museum’s president and director.

This mixing of genres has been prominently tested at Christie’s themed sales, which include works from many different time periods.

“Perhaps they would rather put their resources into other, potentially more profitable departments,” said Nicholas Hall, the former co-chairman of old master paintings at Christie’s, who left in July, along with Benjamin Peronnet, Christie’s head of old master and 19th-century drawings.

While the Frick is eager to reach today’s audience, the museum is also wary of straying from its mission of showing classic European art and sculpture.

“A lot of museums are focused on a false dichotomy — if they get young people in through contemporary exhibitions they’ll stay and get interested in old masters,” said Ian Wardropper, the Frick’s director. “I just don’t believe it. The point is to try to reach them in an intelligent way on their own terms and make it interesting — and that’s not easy; we’re all struggling with that.”

In light of these developments, old masters have become a collecting opportunity. Printings and engravings can go for $4,000 to $5,000. While Orazio Gentileschi’s 17th-century “Danae” sold at Sotheby’s in January for $30.5 million, “that is less than a Christopher Wool and half the price of a Warhol,” Mr. Sainty said. “You can buy a really good Rembrandt for $40 to $50 million. That’s not a lot of money when you think about how many Rembrandts there are — and how many Jeff Koons.”

Nicholas Hall leaves Christie’s after 12 years and returns to dealing
Roland Arkell
August 2016

After 12 years with Christie’s, Nicholas Hall, international head of Old Master and 19th century paintings, is leaving to return to private dealing.

Hall joined Christie’s New York in May 2004 following the auctioneer’s acquisition of Hall & Knight, the gallery he opened in 1996 with former Colnaghi colleague Richard Knight.

Knight left Christie’s in 2015 to form a new partnership with Fabrizio Moretti under the banner of Knight Moretti based on Ryder Street in St. James’s.

During his time at Christie’s, he was involved with the move of the New York Old Masters sale from January to April and the development of cross category theme sales.

Hall’s previous activity as a dealer helped his involvement in the $45m sale of the Duccio Madonna to the Metropolitan Museum in 2004, among a number of high level private sales.