BIDDING WARSotheby’s finds itself locked in a battle with Dan Loeb, one of New York’s most aggressive fund managers. Loeb, 51, who refers to himself as an ‘activist investor’ (the current term for corporate raider), has built up a 9.3 per cent stake in the 269-year-old auctioneer using his Third Point LLC. Sotheby’s first realised
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  Figures compiled by the countless art information bureaus such as ArtTactic, the Mei Moses Index, Artnet and Artprice show that the art market posted strong results in 2013 across all leading fields.  Artprice has calculated that, excluding fees, public auction global sales in 2013 exceeded US$12 billion.  Whilst still a baby , measured against
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  The City of Detroit is bust.  Selling off its exceptional hoard of art treasures could fix it – but not without complicated and legal consequences.   Ivan Lindsay, The Good Life/ Art, Spears WMS Magazine, Issue No. 35, December 2013.         ON 18 JULY, Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, seeking
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  The leading avant-garde art historian Yelena Basner has been detained in Moscow over a problem with an alleged fake painting ‘At restaurant’ by Boris Grigoriev.  Reputedly this painting was bought by the St Petersburg collector Andrew Vasilyev for US$250,000 on the advice of Basner but turned out to be a fake.  Basner now consults
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Sotheby’s caved in to pressure from short-term investors last week by announcing it would pay shareholders a US$300m dividend in March and that it might sell its New York and London offices.  Sotheby’s intended to use its cash position to grow into a diversified conglomerate holding positions in art and real estate.  The cash allowed
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The Russian Avant Garde is full of fakes.  This is common knowledge.  All periods of art suffer from fakes.  Michelangelo faked antique sculpture, Vermeer copied Italian Baroque paintings until his own paintings became sellable.  In fact copying the works of earlier painters was part of art school’s teaching up until modern times.  So this is
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Soviet Art, much derided in the West as second-rate propaganda, is being shown at Sotheby’s in an exhibition dedicated to Soviet Sport.  Soviet period painting and sculpture was often very good and has long been due a reassessment.  Now the supply of earlier Russian Art is drying up it seems that Sotheby’s has finally decided
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    2014 is the official UK-Russian Year of cultural exchange, an initiative signed by William Hague and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in March 2013.  Despite some diplomatic tensions over the last few years over 500,000 Russians have made England their home citing reasons such as safety, good schools, mild climate and sea air.
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An exhibition devoted to Soviet Sporting art has just opened at Sotheby’s in London.  ‘Soviet Art Soviet Sport’ will be showing December 19, 2013 – January 14, 2014 and is drawn from the holdings of the Institute of Russian Realist Art and various private collections.  The Institute of Realist Art has been formed by Alexey
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  EAST BUYS WEST – Spears Magazine, September 2013. The efforts of auction houses and dealers to help Chinese, Russian and Indian collectors acquire a taste for Western art are starting to pay off, judging by recent sales With the wrap-up of Old Masters week and the Masterpiece fair in London, an exhausted art market
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