The United States, the United Kingdom and China dominate the auction market for contemporary art.
This is one trend that emerges from the 2007-2008 annual report by ArtPrice and recently made public. In order, countries where the market has been the most active for artists born after 1945 between July 1, 2007 and June 30 2008:
- USA, 348 M€
- United Kingdom, 262 M€
- China, 259 M€
The distant fourth position is occupied by France, with sales volume of 15 M€.
It was during the Foire Internationale d’art contemporain (FIAC) held in Paris this weekend that the firm has made the evaluation of the market in a 99-page report. The document is free and available online.
The top three artists are Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Cai Guoqiang.
Canada plays a marginal role. With a single event identified in the report (p. 82), it is difficult to compete with Americans. Also, note that only 2.7% of Canadian art galleries participate in the international network, while that number jumps at 18% for the United States (p. 84).
* The exhibit Le Louvre à Québec [The Louvre Museum in Quebec City] now has a microsite.
* Claude Monet’s The basin of waterlilies sold for 80.5 million Canadian dollars this week. In an AFP article, printed by several newspapers across the world, the conversion from British pounds to Euros is completely crazy. Forty million pounds is equivalent to about 50 million, not 80… Jeers go to Montreal daily Le Devoir for reproducing the mistaken conversion while cheers are in order for Cyberpresse. Perhaps the agency issued a correction that was not published? More details at Le Figaro.
[newyorkcitywaterfalls.com]
* Waterfalls will flow under the Brooklyn Bridge and three other spots the East River this summer. [article]
* How to detect forgery? Easy: you just have to check for the presence or absence of nuclear isotopes caused by nuclear explosions. [article]
* Who knew that John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal had been captured by Andy Warhol? The double portrait is on sale in London on 1st July. [see the work]
* A new copyright law could see the light of day in the USA. It would allow the reproduction of works whose authors can not be traced. In Canada, you have to go through the Copyright Board when such a case occurs to fill out an application. Board then possibly delivers a license.
* Always the same debate: one commentator finds that art is empty.
[City of Shadows, Alexey Titarenko]
* I’ve been observing these pictures from Alexey Titarenko and I don’t get tired. In his serie City of Shadows, he stretched the exposure time of his camera to catch the passage of people on his film prints. The result provides ghostly photographs where passerbies seem to leave parts of themselves behind them… [see all images]
* In computer news, Carnegie-Mellon (PA) has developed software to determine the most likely place where a photograph was taken. An algorithm is looking for similar photos on Flickr… One step closer to the recognition of images by computers. [article]
