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.

London – Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale took place this evening (30 June 2008) and realised £86,241,600 / $171,879,508 / €108,578,174 - the highest total for the category at Christie’s in Europe.  The top lot of the auction was Three Studies for a Self Portrait by Francis Bacon (1909-1992), a rare self-portrait triptych that the artist painted while in Paris in 1975, which sold for £17,289,250 / $34,457,475 / €21,767,166.

A Jeff Koons sculpture set an auction record for the artist when it sold tonight for 12.9 million pounds ($25.8 million) at Christie’s International in London.
The 11-foot, 2-inch-high chromium steel “Balloon Flower (Magenta)” had been expected to fetch about 12 million pounds ($23.9 million), Christie’s said. The sculpture was bought by an unidentified telephone bidder.
The work was made in 1995-2000 as part of the artist’s “Celebration” series of high-tech sculptures inspired by childhood memories. Four other versions of “Balloon Flower” exist in four different colors, the auction house said. The seller was Dallas-based collector Howard Rachofsky, who had been guaranteed a minimum price, Christie’s said.
The artist’s previous auction record was $23.6 million for “Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold)”, which was sold at Sotheby’s in New York last November. Sales prices include commissions.

A 1975 set of three self-portraits by Francis Bacon fetched 17.3 million pounds ($34.5 million) in London, the most expensive lot at Christie’s International sale of contemporary art.
At least four bidders competed for the 14-inch-high, gray- hued oil canvases “Three Studies for Self-Portrait”, featuring faces that are twisted, sliced and gorged. The lot, with a presale estimate of more than 10 million pounds and seen in public for the first time, went to an anonymous phone bidder. The record for Bacon was set in May when “Triptych, 1976″, depicting a headless corpse eaten by vultures sold for $86 million.
Christie’s 58-lot auction last night netted 86.2 million pounds, against the company’s own low estimate of 80 million pounds. Eighty-three percent of the lots were sold. Bacon’s piece was one of four trophy works - the other three are by Lucian Freud, Jeff Koons and Lucio Fontana - whose combined estimates represented half the auction’s value. The Bacon was the only one that sold for much more than its top estimate.
Koons’s 11-foot, 2-inch-high chromium-steel sculpture “Balloon Flower (Magenta)” sold for an artist record of 12.9 million pounds, against a presale estimate of 12 million pounds. Freud’s 1980 canvas, “Naked Portrait With Reflection”, showing a nude model reclining on a battered sofa, sold for 11.8 million pounds, compared with a top estimate 15 million pounds. (Bloomberg)

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.

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is about to display to the world one of the most important public art projects that the city of New York has ever hosted. It is “The New York City Waterfalls”, the extraordinary series of four waterfalls that will rise about 36 metres above the water of the Big Apple’s bay: realized in full respect of the environment and dislocated in four points facing the East River, in Lower Manhattan, under the Brooklyn bridge anchorage and on the northern coast of the Governor’s Island. An extremely impressive work by the European artist, who received the entire budget of 15 million dollars by the Public Art Fund, a private non-profit foundation, which in past years sponsored also “Sky Mirror” by Anish Kapoor and “Puppy” by Jeff Koons, both installed at the Rockefeller Centre.

FROM JOHNS TO HIRST AND KOONS AND FINALLY FREUD

translated by Giorgina Arcuri