It is not possible to overexpose Barack Obama. With another six weeks before he even takes office, we are still being bombarded with versions of his visage, and those riding the bandwagon include not only the memorabilia industry – the commemorative plates hawked nightly to American television viewers for $19.99 apiece are especially dismal – but also renowned artists such as Kurt Kauper and Yan Pei-Ming.
In fact, those porcelain plates may be something of a bargain. (Buyers are allowed only two plates per order because of limited supplies.) The circular painting of Obama by Kauper that was on view at Art Basel Miami Beach earlier this month carried a price tag of $65,000. The monochrome Yan Pie-Ming version of the President-elect, bundled down to Miami by the David Zwirner Gallery in New York, was a steal at a mere $300,000.
Indeed, visitors to Art Basel Miami Beach could barely raise their heads from their overpriced hotel pillows this year without meeting the gaze of this year’s election victor in some medium or another. Among the most striking was a rendering of an already famous mural by the LA-based French street artist Mr Brainwash (aka Thierry Guetta) outside the Scope pavilion. It featured Mr Obama as Superman, fists on hips. Alongside it, the artist had added the lines, “Rosa Parks sat, so that Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked, so that Barack Obama could run. Obama ran, so we could fly.”
(The Independent)

To the casual observer, the Sagamore Hotel’s annual brunch Saturday morning summed up the story of a diminished Art Basel Miami Beach. Typically one of the most slammed events of the week, this year you could stroll the green out back without suffering an exasperating logjam of artists, dealers, collectors, curators and consultants schmoozing in a mash-up of accents.
Plenty of high-powered art-world types still milled about, but for the first time in years you could see your way to the coffee. Thinner crowds at many of the week’s events was enough to get some people going about Basel ‘08 being something of a bust and a bore.
”The energy is off,” quickly became the week’s refrain. And it may have seemed true at the Sagamore. But if you paid attention, you could still spot the wheeling and dealing on the sidelines.
New York art consultant Kimberly Marrero quietly sipped Evian with a collector from Australia at a poolside table. He was pretty sure he wanted something he saw at the Miami Beach Convention Center. She agreed it would be a good addition to his collection and told him she was pretty sure she could talk it down from its $20,000 list price. It’s relatively easy to score a 10 to 20 percent discount this year, she said.
”I had angst coming into Basel week, but it feels good to have more time to sit and talk about a work of art,” said Marrero, echoing what so many others trying to make a living from the decelerating art market said during the course of the week.
Sales are off after several years of wild speculating, but art dealers, consultants and artists (unlike real-estate and stock brokers) have been pretty Zen about the downturning economy and the hit to their pocketbooks. (Miami Herald)

In these days of crisis for the global economy and finances, many experts of the sector are continuing to wonder if and how the art market will be affected by what seems to be the greatest economic turmoil of contemporary times. It is now clear that this difficulty has already had effects on the budgets of the great American and European collectors, who during the market-exhibitions – London’s Frieze and Paris’s Fiac – proved to be more careful, slowing down the sales movement which in the past editions had recorded sold-outs for the strongest pieces.
A market that is changing and whose changes are hard to predict, especially as far as contemporary art is concerned. This sector is sharply declining and this portends a reduction in the speculations on contemporary, which recently had had record quotations. And the next appointment with contemporary art is going to be played at home, where the crisis broke out. Until the 7th December it will be possible to see Art Basel Miami Beach, the sister event of the Swiss fair and centre of great concentration of American collectors, as well as essential element for the overseas art system, which in the 2007 edition recorded an excellent performance: 43 thousand visitors coming from all over the world and with very healthy sales.

The main International economists are now claiming that the crisis of the financial markets, and the one of the estate markets, are definitely starting to affect the art market, too. A sector that has always been strongly influenced by economic cycles, rather than financial ones. But finance is the world that reacts quickly to economic forecasts. The estate market and therefore the artistic one have slower reaction times.
In a “black” period like the one we are living in, the art market, after the crazy leap of the last years, is trying to show a certain solidity. But what can we expect for the year 2009? The market is changing. Nobody can establish with precision which direction it will take. According to analysts, next year will be comparable to the early Nineties, when prices fell by 44% in two years.
The veteran critic of the New York Times, Jerry Salz, after pointing out the excesses of speculations in the last years, sustains that the recession that is about to arrive will be a period of renewal for art, like the ’40s, ’70s and ’90s were in the last century. Obviously, somebody will get hurt. In fact, this crisis is not expected to hit only auctions, but also galleries and studios.

The Empire State Building archive, which includes more than 500 items, is going on sale at the Wright auction house in Chicago on December 11. Wright’s low estimate for the collection, which includes elevation renderings, working drawings, models and maquettes, and other ephemera, is $470,000. The drawings of  the building, arguably one of the most recognized in the world and the most loved in New York, had been stored at the homes of the last partners of the successor firm of Shreve Lamb & Harmon, the firm that designed the building. The office closed in 1995, having never surpassed the glory of the 1931 tower. The partners declined to be named.
Reached by phone in Miami where he is attending Art Basel Miami, Richard Wright, the president and founder of the auction house, indicated that several institutions and collectors had expressed interest in the archive, but he declined to name them. “Sometimes it is difficult for institutions to pull together the funds in time for an auction,” he added. The items are being sold separately, so it is likely that they will be dispersed among multiple collectors. “I’m confident that the best pieces will be seen by the public,” Wright said. Carol Willis, founder and director of the Skyscraper Museum, one of the institutions Wright approached, expressed some regret that the collection would likely be dispersed. “Is it a shame that this collection, which is coherent for the moment, would be broken up? Yes,” she said. “Is it tragic for our understanding of the building? No. This is one of the most documented buildings in the world.” Willis said that the Empire State is her favorite building, but when asked if the Skyscraper Museum would be bidding on the lots, she replied, flatly, “no.” (The Architect’s Newspaper)

The annual frenzied sales at London’s Frieze Art Fair evaporated this year as collectors felt no pressure to make expensive purchases instantly, dealers said.
“People are shell-shocked by the world economy”, said New York gallerist Marianne Boesky, who had a booth at the five-day fair, which ended yesterday. “People are buying but they’re taking it slowly and not rushing into things”.
Boesky sold a small painting by Barnaby Furnas for $50,000 and a sculpture-and-photo installation by emerging artist William J. O’Brien for $12,500. Her more expensive works - a $400,000 painting by Lisa Yuskavage and $1.8 million painting by Takashi Murakami - had a harder time finding buyers.
Now in its sixth year, Frieze is considered one of the world’s three most important contemporary-art fairs, along with Art Basel in Switzerland in June and Art Basel Miami Beach in December.
Even visits from Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, his partner Dasha Zhukova, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, singer George Michael, New York collectors Susan and Michael Hort and art advisers to hedge-fund managers Sandy Heller and Todd Levin, didn’t spur much excitement. (Bloomberg)

Contemporary Fine Arts, a Berlin gallery that represents artists such as Peter Doig and Georg Baselitz, has made profit at every art fair the past five years.
The winning streak may end this week at Frieze, London’s largest art fair, which is taking place during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
“I don’t expect it to go really well,” said Nicole Hackert, a Contemporary Fine Arts partner. “We are not separate from the rest of the economic world.”
Frieze this week coincides with evening contemporary-art sales in London that auction houses estimate will make at least 107 million pounds ($183 million). Last week, Sotheby’s five-day series of auctions in Hong Kong tallied $142 million, about half the presale estimate. Sellers at New York’s auctions in November are watching to see if bank bailouts and economic gloom reduce demand, especially by Russian buyers who have propped up sales.
On Oct. 15, VIP guests will be admitted to Frieze’s 200,000 square-foot temporary structure in Regent’s Park. Now in its sixth year, the event is considered one of the world’s three most- important art fairs, with Art Basel in June and Art Basel Miami Beach in December.
This year’s edition will feature 152 galleries from 27 countries, offering new work by more than 1,000 contemporary artists, said Frieze in an e-mailed statement.
Beginning on Oct. 17, on the Friday of the Frieze fair, Sotheby’s, Phillips de Pury and Christie’s International will hold a series of evening sales. (Bloomberg)

CHELSEA PATRON HAS DISCOVERED A PASSION FOR ART COLLECTIONS THANKS TO NEW FIANCÉ

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

Roman Abramovich, the forty-year old businessman of Russian origins, seems to be tired of dealing only in real-estate properties, yachts and football teams (for Chelsea he has so far spent a billion dollars). As for many Russian oligarchs, Abramovich’s new “toy” is art. Indeed, on 12th June 2008 the super-billionaire inaugurated in Moscow a new gallery centre, event that attracted to the Russian capital great names of worldwide art, such as the famous art gallery owner Larry Gagosian, director of the Tate Modern and of the Hermitage, but also many VIPs of the International Jet Set.

translated by Giorgina Arcuri

Art Basel has started and the buyers have arrived. However, the Americans are missing. This seems to be the biggest complaint on behalf of operators. The American public has stepped aside and given way to the Europeans. It is not a change that affects the number of transactions, but rather an actual geographic shift of the market. This does not worry all the art gallery managers, some of whom have proven to be indifferent with respect to who buys the works. Also because many of the participants are too busy calculating their business volume to worry about the nationality of the buyers.

Article translated by Amritee Mahabir