This summer great plans and a lot of movement in Beijing, chosen as the capital for the Olympic games 2008, where athletes from all over the world are landing as well as a special team of sportsmen selected by Andy Warhol. Indeed, the Chinese city has decided to host, from the 26th July in the venue of the Faurschou gallery, a famous collection of portraits by Andy Warhol dedicated to some very notorious athletes.

The first semester for the art market is about to come to an end and before its conclusion Christie’s auction house is going to try itself out with an auction completely dedicated to author prints. Indeed, on 31st July Christie’s New York is going to propose a very interesting sale that will attract many neo-collectors, thanks to the very low estimates that vary from 300 to 18 thousand dollars. “Prints & Multiples” will auction 357 lots, including 29 works by Pablo Picasso, 23 by Joan Mirò and 5 by Marc Chagall. If we look through the catalogue we will see many interesting works that could give an excellent result to this sale dedicated to prints and multiples, a sector considered as one the minor sectors of the art market.

Last 1st June the world of fashion came to a halt to commemorate the death of Yves Saint Laurent, the French fashion designer considered one of the greatest fashion creators of the twentieth century who started his career at the Christian Dior maison to then found the homonymous label (Yves Saint Laurent) with his life and business partner Pierre Bergè.
His mark in the world of fashion and luxury remains recognizable and his name will always be symbol of style, becoming symbol of sophisticated but also innovative elegance.

Last 8th July Christie’s auctioned among its Old Masters some recovered treasures, whose traces had gone lost. Besides the rediscovery of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s masterpiece “La surprise”, sold for 12,361,250 pounds, 3 drawings by Goya have re-emerged, after 131 years of not knowing anything about them.
At first, it was believed that the three recovered drawings by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) could have fetched a profit equal to 2 million pounds, then they were sold individually and totalled a much higher amount, the same that happened for Watteau’s painting.

The two Old Master sessions in London have proved the good trend of the sector, confirming the positive results achieved by Christie’s in the last days. Sales almost totalled 51.5 million pounds and 76.7% of the lots were sold, 93% if we consider their value. The evening sale achieved the second highest profits ever for the sector, with a 42% increase compared to last year’s sales. It is also the second total takings of an Old Master auction ever to be realized in Europe. During the auction, nineteen new records were established and twenty lots were sold for more than a million dollars.

In the history of art there are artists who are remembered for a single artistic production, somehow overlooking the different expressions of their creativity. This is the case of Robert Indiana who due to one of his icons   has become part of collective imagination with one single figure, able to influence heavily the spectator’s perception. In brief, Robert Indiana is for everyone Love. That writing in capital letters positioned in a square with the tilted letter O, declined in thousands of ways, colours and materials.

Recently Rembrandt (Leida 1606- Amsterdam 1669), the great Dutch painter and carver, has been talked about with regard to some clamorous news. Indeed, recently the authorship of a painting of which nothing was known, has been attributed to him, and the discovery seems to have happened in a curious way. The existence of the painting was already known of, thanks to a reproduction dating from around 1800, but nothing was known about its history and preservation until now.
The work came to light in October 2007, when an English family handed the painting over to Moore Allen & Innocent to auction it, and back then the first questions and perplexities about the possible authorship of the work started being raised.

In the last few weeks, London city has proved to be the European capital of the art market. With sales dedicated to the modern and impressionist sector, Sotheby’s and Christie’s have confirmed the good state of the market. Indeed, the “Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale” held on 24th June fetched 144 million pounds (284 million dollars), achieving the highest total for a European auction and giving “Le bassin aux nymphèas” by Claude Monet the new world record for the artist, selling the piece for 41 million pounds.

Since American artist Jeff Koons, during the late seventies, started exhibiting his first inflatable works, he has never left the footlights. Having reached very soon world celebrity, Koons has triggered countless debates within the contemporary art world and wherever he goes he is followed by a multitude of reporters, while his exhibitions are invaded by figures of the star system, billionaire collectors, art lovers and curious people attracted by this artist who has transformed his life into art creating an aureole of gossip around him.

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

Particularly famous for her provocative representation of the female body or her anatomic fragments, during her long career Kiki Smith has explored a wide range of subjects and themes, that vary from religion to folklore, passing through mythology, natural sciences, history of art and especially feminism. The American sculptress of German origins (she was born in Germany in 1954 but she has lived and worked in New York since the seventies) can be defined a conceptual artist, for her ability to analyze and examine the human form from its inside. All Kiki Smith’s oeuvre is founded on the intent to present the human body as a martyred body, a subject exhausted by the frantic pace of contemporary society.