Art News. Vasari Codex

trending_up market schedule Jun 24, 2025 visibility 12 link 5 artists

jeff koons split rocker lacma resnicks 1234746066

Lynda and Stewart Resnick have donated a monumental Jeff Koons sculpture, *Split-Rocker*, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The 37-foot-tall work, made of a metal skeleton and planted with 50,000 flowers, resembles a hybrid toy head—half rocking horse, half dinosaur. It will be installed near a new group of galleries endowed by trustee David Geffen. The Resnicks listed an unnamed piece given to LACMA on their 2023 tax filings valued at $9.6 million. The donation is part of director Michael Govan’s long-term plan to add another major sculpture to LACMA’s campus, alongside works like Chris Burden’s *Urban Light* and Tony Smith’s *Smoke*.

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trending_up market schedule Feb 4, 2026 visibility 27 link 19 artists, 5 galleries

Art Basel Qatar VIP day: fair’s debut encourages patience

Art Basel Qatar opened its inaugural edition to VIPs in Doha, featuring an unconventional 'boothless' format with 87 exhibitors each presenting a solo artist. The fair, curated by artist Wael Shawky, is split between two venues in the Msheireb district, with blue-chip galleries in M7 and more emerging to mid-tier galleries in the Design District. The event is heavily subsidized by Qatar, significantly lowering costs for exhibitors and encouraging a focus on market education over immediate sales.

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trending_up market schedule Oct 25, 2025 visibility 31 link 32 artists, 9 galleries

Discover 10 Highlights from Art Basel Paris 2025

Art Basel Paris 2025, now in its fourth edition, took place from October 22–26 at the restored 1900 Paris Exposition venue, a Beaux-Arts landmark with Art Nouveau iron and glasswork. The fair hosted 206 international galleries and introduced a new 'Avant-Première' V.V.I.P. day on October 21, where each gallery could allocate six guest passes. Blue-chip sales were swift, led by Hauser & Wirth selling Gerhard Richter's *Abstraktes Bild* (1987) for $23 million to a European collector. Other notable sales included Bruce Nauman's neon sculpture *Masturbating Man* for over $4.7 million and Amedeo Modigliani's *Jeune fille aux macarons* (1918) for $10 million at Pace Gallery. The fair also featured curatorial sectors Emergence (16 solo presentations by emerging artists) and Premise (ten historical projects with works predating 1900).

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trending_up market schedule Dec 12, 2025 visibility 12 link 3 artists

kenny schachter aucton sales column 2725477

Kenny Schachter's column reveals that Jeff Bezos secretly bought Frida Kahlo's 1941 painting *Me and My Parrot* for over $130 million in a private auction hosted by Christie's in 2021, and that Mark Zuckerberg recently purchased René Magritte's 1964 painting *Le fils de l'homme* (The Son of Man) for roughly $150 million in another private treaty sale negotiated by Christie's. The article also discusses a new private auction Christie's is organizing for a major Magritte work valued north of $50 million, and critiques the growing influence of tech billionaires—the "Magnificent 7"—on the art market.

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trending_up market schedule Nov 13, 2025 visibility 11 link 2 artists

metallica kirk hammett conan frank frazetta 1234761649

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett is auctioning Frank Frazetta's painting *Conan the Berserker* (1967), which he purchased directly from the artist for $1 million in 2009. The work, originally used as cover art for a paperback edition of Robert E. Howard's novel *Conan the Conqueror*, will be offered in Heritage Auctions' “Hollywood/Entertainment Signature Auction” on December 9–10, with bidding starting at $10 million. The sale follows a record-breaking Frazetta auction in September, when his oil painting *Man Ape* (1966) sold for $13.5 million.

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trending_up market schedule Jul 16, 2025 visibility 16 link 7 artists

rei kawakubo comme des garcons piasa auction 2667989

A Japanese collector, Hiroaki Narita, is auctioning his extensive collection of Rei Kawakubo's designs for Comme des Garçons at the French auction house Piasa on October 1, during Paris Fashion Week. The sale includes over 500 lots of garments and accessories dating from 1969 to 1999, with estimates ranging from €150 to €2,000. The collection spans Kawakubo's most iconic collections, including Pirates (1981), Body Meets Dress, Dress Meets Body (1997), and Kaleidoscope (1996), showcasing her avant-garde, deconstructed aesthetic.

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trending_up market schedule May 21, 2025 visibility 16 link 13 artists

lalanne ostrich bar sothebys paris 2641959

François-Xavier Lalanne's functional sculpture "Ostrich Bar" (1965) sold for €11.1 million ($12.5 million) at Sotheby's Paris on May 20, far exceeding its €3–4 million estimate after an 11-minute bidding war. The piece, one of only six ever produced, features two porcelain ostriches gripping a metal shelf with a central egg for ice cubes; it was the artist's personal favorite, kept in his bedroom for over four decades. The sale took place within Sotheby's Important Design sale curated by model Betty Catroux.

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trending_up market schedule Apr 10, 2026 visibility 47 link 54 artists, 16 galleries

EXPO CHICAGO 2026 Opens With Local Enthusiasm and Strong Institutional Sales

EXPO CHICAGO 2026 has launched at Navy Pier with a streamlined, highly curated format that emphasizes quality over quantity. The fair’s opening days have been defined by robust institutional engagement, with several major museums acquiring works for their permanent collections. This year’s edition features a diverse array of artists and galleries, reinforcing its position as the premier contemporary art platform in the American Midwest.

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trending_up market schedule Jan 16, 2026 visibility 27 link 6 artists, 4 galleries

High-Profile Montreal-Based Art Gallery Opening in Wynwood This Summer

Montreal-based Galerie de Bellefeuille, a commercial gallery founded in 1980 that represents over 100 artists including Damien Hirst, Robert Indiana, Jeff Koons, and Alexander Calder, has announced it will open a 4,000-square-foot location at 136 NW 25th St. in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood this summer. The expansion comes shortly after the gallery's planned U.S. flagship in Midtown New York, and marks the latest in a wave of international galleries establishing a presence in Miami.

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trending_up market schedule Jun 21, 2025 visibility 14 link 29 artists, 4 galleries

Global Art Market Report 2024–2025

The global art market saw total sales of $57.5 billion in 2024, a 12% decline year-on-year, marking the second consecutive annual drop. Transaction volumes rose 3% to about 40.5 million, driven by works under $50,000 which made up 85% of dealer sales. Sotheby's and Christie's together accounted for roughly half of global fine-art auction turnover, though both saw significant auction revenue declines. The United States led with 43% of global sales, while China's market share fell to 15%, its lowest since 2009. Online art sales grew to 18% of total value, and new buyer momentum was strong, with 44% of dealer buyers being new and 91% of high-net-worth collectors optimistic.

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trending_up market schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 17 link 4 artists, 3 galleries

From politics to painting: works by Albanian prime minister Edi Rama are new art fair favourites

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, a trained artist who studied at Tirana's Academy of Fine Arts and worked in Paris before entering politics, has been added to the roster of Berlin gallery Société. The gallery debuted his colorful pen-and-oil drawings and painted bronze sculptures at Frieze London in October 2025 and Art Basel Paris, where around half of the drawings sold. Rama, who has exhibited at the Centre Pompidou and twice at the Venice Biennale, continues to create art while serving his fourth term as prime minister.

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trending_up market schedule Apr 27, 2026 visibility 23 link 4 artists

Is A Random Unknown Artist More Valuable Than Picasso? AI Thinks So.

An experiment using a custom AI model to evaluate artistic value independent of market context found that the model assigned a seven-figure price to an unknown street artist's work while valuing a Picasso at under $1,000. The project, run by an art journalist with a data scientist and an AI expert, trained a Fine Art Large Vision Model on millions of images and price data. Without metadata like artist name or gallery affiliation, the model's predictions were technically interesting but commercially useless; only when those market signals were added did predictions align with real auction outcomes.

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trending_up market schedule Feb 13, 2026 visibility 9 link 2 artists

year ahead fire horse 2744885

Artnet Pro's Asia Pivot newsletter consulted feng shui masters and artists versed in Chinese metaphysics to forecast trends for the 2026 Year of the Fire Horse. Predictions include high volatility in financial markets and the art sector, a potential slowdown in traditional Western markets like Europe and North America, and continued growth in emerging regions such as Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Gulf. A 'big disruption' from the Global South is anticipated in the first half of the year, followed by market growth in the latter half.

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trending_up market schedule Dec 12, 2025 visibility 14 link 6 artists

frank frazetta fantasy art market 2725011

Frank Frazetta's iconic painting *Conan the Berserker* (1967) is being auctioned at Heritage Auctions with an opening bid of $10 million. The work, originally created for the cover of the 1967 paperback *Conan the Conqueror*, has become one of the definitive images of the fantasy hero. This year alone, five Frazetta paintings have sold for over $1 million, including *Man Ape* (1966) which fetched $13.5 million in September. The artist's total sales volume was just $674,640 in 2018, according to the Artnet Price Database.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 23, 2025 visibility 6 link 3 artists

banksy loan dispute brandler metamorfosi 1234753077

John Brandler, a British street art specialist, loaned three Banksy works to Metamorfosi, a Rome-based touring exhibition company, for shows in Italy and Switzerland. After a two-year contract expired and was extended with a monthly fee, Brandler claims Metamorfosi has fallen behind on payments and has not returned the artworks, including the mural "Season's Greetings" (2018), "Heart Boy," and "Computer Robot." Another Banksy dealer, Acoris Andipa, says he is owed £45,000 for curatorial services. Metamorfosi disputes the claims, stating it has paid monthly installments and attempted to return the works, blaming storage issues for the delay.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 5, 2025 visibility 24 link 51 artists, 25 galleries

The Armory Show jumpstarts New York art market after summer of hand-wringing

The Armory Show opened its 2024 edition in New York with solid sales during the VIP preview on September 4, providing a positive signal for the city's art market after a summer marked by gallery closures and economic uncertainty. The fair saw the return of over 20 galleries that had previously taken a hiatus, including Andrew Kreps, Uffner and Liu, Instituto de Visión, and White Cube for the first time since 1994. Fair director Kyla McMillan emphasized the importance of rooting the fair in New York and praised exhibitors for taking risks with experimental works, such as Nikita Gale's installation 'Interceptor' (2025), which sold for $60,000 before the preview began.

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trending_up market schedule Jan 27, 2026 visibility 17 link 1 artist

nifty gateway closed down 2740267

Nifty Gateway, an early NFT marketplace founded in 2018 and acquired by Gemini, will shut down on February 23 after entering withdrawal-only mode. The platform, which once reported $300 million in gross merchandise value in 2021 and partnered with Sotheby's for a $17 million NFT drop, is closing amid a sharp decline in NFT trading activity. Users must withdraw their assets by the deadline, after which they can no longer list, buy, or sell NFTs on the site.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 8, 2025 visibility 10 link 1 artist

christies reportedly closes digital art department 1234751156

Christie's is closing its digital art department and has parted ways with Nicole Sales Giles, the auction house's vice president of digital. The decision comes over four years after Christie's record-breaking $69.3 million sale of Beeple's "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" (2021), which ignited the NFT boom. Christie's stated it will continue selling digital art within its broader 20th- and 21st-century art category.

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trending_up market schedule Oct 9, 2025 visibility 10 link 2 artists

christies jonathan burden decorative arts auction results 1234756132

Christie's online sale of decorative arts from the collection of Jonathan Burden, titled 'Crafted and Collected: The Jonathan Burden Sale,' achieved over $1.07 million with fees, more than doubling the low estimate of $487,500. The sale featured 151 lots, with only five unsold, a 97% sell-through rate. The top lot was a 10-foot-long French Incarnat Turquin marble dining table that sold for $101,600, far exceeding its $30,000 high estimate. The auction employed an innovative 'in-situ' viewing at Burden's studio in Long Island City, where potential bidders could meet the dealer, hear stories, and see pieces demonstrated. Many items sold for multiples of their estimates, including a Victorian metamorphic chair that brought $27,940 against a $3,000 high estimate.

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trending_up market schedule Jul 30, 2025 visibility 11 link 1 artist, 3 galleries

Can Hauser & Wirth's new Palo Alto space achieve what its rivals failed to?

Hauser & Wirth announced on July 30 that it will open a new location in Palo Alto, California, in spring 2025. The 2,600-square-foot space, located in a former post office on Hamilton Avenue near Stanford University and tech giants like Meta and Google, will be the Swiss mega-gallery's 17th location worldwide and its third in California, joining two existing spaces in Los Angeles. The gallery's president, Marc Payot, cited the Bay Area's dedicated collector community and museums as key reasons for the expansion.

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trending_up market schedule Apr 14, 2026 visibility 17 link 2 artists

Highlights from New Orleans Auction Galleries' Spring Fine Art and Design Sale

New Orleans Auction Galleries has announced its Spring Fine Art and Design sale, scheduled for April 23, 2026. The auction will feature 279 lots spanning over a century of artistic production, highlighted by significant works from Mexican modernist José Clemente Orozco, Abstract Expressionist Grace Hartigan, and Southern Regionalist John McCrady. The collection explores diverse themes ranging from the metaphysical to social and political commentary through painting, sculpture, and mixed media.

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trending_up market schedule Feb 6, 2026 visibility 13 link 2 artists

Salvador Dalí | Don Quixote

A Salvador Dalí metal bas-relief titled "Don Quixote" is being offered for bidding through Palm Beach Modern Auctions. The work is a limited edition sculpture in metal with platinum patina, signed and numbered 111/175, published by Martin Lawrence Ltd. Editions. The listing appears on Artsy's platform and includes details on dimensions, condition, and auction terms.

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trending_up market schedule Sep 26, 2025 visibility 16 link 8 artists

Philadelphia’s Bankrupt UArts Sells off Library of Rare Art Books

Philadelphia’s bankrupt University of the Arts (UArts) sold off rare books and manuscripts from its library at a Freeman’s | Hindman auction on September 10, 2024. The 38 lots from UArts’ collection fetched $163,328, nearly 20% of the sale’s $806,519 total. Top lots included a deluxe first edition of Andre Level’s 1928 monograph on Pablo Picasso, signed by the artist, which sold for $35,200; a complete portfolio of Josef Albers’s 1965 *Die Oberflache*, which brought $21,760; and a limited edition of James Joyce’s *Ulysses* illustrated by Robert Motherwell, which sold for $16,640. UArts closed abruptly in June 2024, citing financial fragility and declining enrollments, and later filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, selling its real estate holdings for nearly $75 million.

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trending_up market schedule May 30, 2025 visibility 15 link 5 artists

Augmented reality enjoys growing appeal as a tool for the art trade

Augmented reality (AR) headsets like the Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest II are gaining traction as tools for the art trade, according to experts interviewed in this article. Gallerists Will Shott and Hal Bromm see potential for virtual tours, studio visits, and previewing artworks in situ, while adviser India Price notes that seeing works at scale in one's own space could boost buyer confidence. However, Martin Murphy of Ringling College of Art and Design argues that practical barriers—such as device personalization and generational divides—may limit adoption among traditional collectors.

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trending_up market schedule Dec 16, 2025 visibility 11

sothebys is selling a watch gifted to admiral nelson before his last and defining victory at the battle of trafalgar 1234766915

Sotheby’s is auctioning a historic watch gifted to Admiral Horatio Nelson by officers of the HMS Victory in 1805, just weeks before his death at the Battle of Trafalgar. The gilt metal, gold, and enamel timepiece, known as the “Victory Watch,” is the top lot in Sotheby’s “Fine Watches” online sale, with a high estimate of £400,000 ($537,000). It is the first time the watch has come to auction in 20 years, and the current bid stands at £65,000 ($87,300).

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trending_up market schedule Dec 8, 2025 visibility 6

ubs report billionaires spend more art antiques 1234765643

UBS's eleventh Billionaire Ambitions Report reveals that global billionaire wealth hit a record $15.8 trillion in 2025, with the number of billionaires rising 8.8% to nearly 3,000. The report, based on a survey of 87 ultra-wealthy clients, found that 27% plan to increase their investment in art and antiques, while 65% intend to maintain current levels—totaling 92% of respondents. Enthusiasm is strongest in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (35% planning increases), followed by Asia-Pacific (25%), and weakest in the Americas (15%).

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