After the ups and downs seen at auctions in the last few days, where experts could only wish away and confirm alternately a crisis of the art market, there are still interesting proposals and the response to current fears seems to be to not lose heart and focus the attention on important names and mind-boggling predictions. After Malevich, Degas and Munch, who achieved records last week at Sotheby’s New York auction, now it seems to be Basquiat’s turn, as after 2007 he could set a new record at Christie’s “Post-war and contemporary art” auction.

Former Guggenheim Foundation director, Thomas Krens, is at the center of an investigation surrounding the purchase of works for the museum’s flagship European sight in Bilbao (The Independent).
With a budget of 96mn euros (£76mn), most of which provided by Basque regional authorities, Krens has been accused of frivolous spending at inflated prices. The resulting collection is said to appear structureless. The Basque government’s adviser to the museum between 1996 and 1998, Javier Gonzalez de Durana, has highlighted one of the examples as Large Blue Anthropometry, by Yves Klein. The $2.7mn that the museum paid for the work is said to be a gross overestimation, with reasonable estimates valuing the piece at no more than $2mn. Durana added that Krens had built up Guggenheim Bilbao’s collection on the basis of “personal criteria and overpayments.”
Durana also cited the purchase of Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing 831 as a piece of last minute opportunism. Although works by Cy Twombly and Brice Marden were top of Guggenheim Bilbao’s list, it is thought that when the purchase fell through, Krens turned to a last minute fumbling deal for the LeWitt installation. “That commission was the result of an improvisation, since this artist was not among those considered important for the collection,” Mr Durana stated. Although Krens described the LeWitt piece as a “discovery,” Durana described it as the product of a “fortuitous” visit to an exhibition by the conceptual artist, who died last year.
All this comes in the wake of an investigation into Guggenheim Bilbao’s financial irregularities, after Roberto Cearsolo Barrenetxea, who had been head of finance at the Frank-Gehry designed museum since it opened in 1997, admitted in a letter to officials that he was responsible for an unaccounted half a million euros from the museum’s fund. In the letter, Mr Barrenetxea confessed to transferring a total of 487,000 euros ($776,000) from companies linked to the museum into his personal account since 1998.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, European flagship for the US cultural foundation, is reported to have paid well over the odds for art to fill Frank Gehry’s swooping titanium masterpiece.
Documents relating to the acquisition of Guggenheim Bilbao’s permanent collection between 1996 and 1998 reveal that the Guggenheim Foundation’s New York boss and international supremo of the Bilbao museum, Thomas Krens, purchased works that caught his personal fancy while trawling the galleries and studios of artists he knew, Basque investigators say.
Mr Krens, with a budget of €96m (£76m) provided mostly by Basque regional authorities, paid more than the market value for the works, offering whatever price the artists demanded, a Basque regional MP who is examining the museum’s records said yesterday.
As Richard Armstrong, former director of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie art museum, prepares to become the Guggenheim Foundation’s boss next month, allegations are flying around about the erratic way artworks were assembled for Guggenheim Bilbao by his predecessor.
One controversial acquisition questioned at the time by the Basque government’s adviser to the museum between 1996 and 1998, Javier Gonzalez de Durana, was Large Blue Anthropometry, by Yves Klein. The museum paid $2.7m for the work, when it should not have paid more than $2m, Mr Durana wrote. He said Mr Krens built up Guggenheim Bilbao’s collection on the basis of “personal criteria and overpayments”.
Works by Cy Twombly and Brice Marden were earmarked as highlights for one of the museum’s principal second-floor rooms. But those purchases fell through and, at the last moment, Mr Krens requested instead a work from Sol Lewitt, who sold him Wall Drawing 831.”That commission was the result of an improvisation, since this artist was not among those considered important for the collection,” Mr Durana wrote. He believed the Lewitt work, hailed by Mr Krens as a “discovery”, was acquired only following the director’s “fortuitous” visit to an exhibition by the conceptual artist who died last year.
The entire collection, including works by Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons, was built up in a similarly arbitrary and haphazard manner, “on the basis of visits by Krens to artists and exhibitions,” the conservative Basque regional MP Arturo Aldecoa said this week; he did not detail individual works. Pieces were acquired on the basis of skimpy recommendations that always coincided with the opinions of the gallery or artist in question, Mr Aldecoa said, according to Bilbao’s daily El Correo yesterday.
One star exhibit, a work by Anselm Keifer created to complement the huge scale of the galleries, came to Bilbao not as the acquisition it desired, but only on long-term loan: “a loss, a sacrifice”, Mr Durana reported.
The revelations emerged during investigations into a scandal that broke in April over the embezzlement of €500,000 (£400,000) by the museum’s former financial director, Roberto Cearsolo, and into €6m losses caused by disastrously misjudged currency deals.
Mr Aldecoa agreed the collection’s value had appreciated, but insisted the works were overpriced when bought. (The Independent)

This September, Moscow is the place to be. Two exclusive openings will turn Russia’s capital. The first, held on the 16th, is the already internationally famous Dasha Zhukova’s Garage for Contemporary Culture, with an Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Moscow Retrospective. Then, just a day of rest to get ready for Gagosian, whose new muscovite exhibition is opening on September 18th in a place with a remarkable name: “Red October”. Conceived by Victoria Gelfand and Sam Orlofsky, the exhibition “For what you are about to receive” will feature a list of contemporary art masters such as Cy Twombly, Willem De Kooning, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakani, Ed Ruscha and Richard Serra.

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.

The works by American artist Cy Twombly really seem to be loved and sought after by many collectors, curators and museum directors. And in July 2007 a reported fact proved how someone can love excessively his masterpieces. Everyone will remember the scandal raised by Rindy Sam, French artist of Cambogian origins who, while visiting the  Collection Lambert Museum of Avignon, kissed a white canvas by Twombly. A love gesture, an artistic act provoked by the power of art that cost Sam the charge for having “vandalized” a masterpiece worth 2 million dollars.