Art Law Blog : New York Art Law Lawyer & Attorney : Fox Rothschild Law Firm : Theft, Intellectual Property, Institutional Negotiation : Manhattan, New York City

At Art Basel, one of the largest and most famous contemporary art fairs in the world, the vibe was "boisterous," reports the New York Times.

Art Basel spans more than 300 galleries from 37 countries. And as reported by the Times, "while the quality of work was noticeably better than it had been a year ago, the days when collectors came to discover new talent are still a distant memory. Instead, booths are filled with a commercial smorgasbord of popular artists. "

Not everything is the way it once was, however. 

The Times also reported that "but to say that business was approaching that of the boom years would be an overstatement. 'There’s not the impulse shopping there once was,” said Tobias Meyer, who runs Sotheby’s contemporary art department. 'New buyers are coming here as much for information gathering as for collecting.' Many dealers said they felt a price resistance when it came to spending more than $500,000. "

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140 works which were found in a bank vault in Paris in 1979 will be offered for sale at Sotheby's, according to the Associated Press.

The collection had been neglected for decades because an acquaintance of the art dealer who owned the work had deposited the art in the bank in 1939, but killed by the Nazis in 1942.

Highlights of the lot include a 1905 painting by French artist Andre Derain valued at up to $18 million, a portrait of the writer Emile Zola by Cezanne, three rare monotypes by Degas, and a print by Renoir.

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The fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 is considered by many to have triggered one of the worst economic declines since the Great Depression.

You can now own a piece of this regrettable history as Sotheby's looks to auction off over 400 works that once dotted the hallways of the famous investment house.

The auction, which is scheduled to occur on September 25, 2010, is expected to fetch more than $10 million, reported the Wall Street Journal.   On Tuesday, June 15, 2010, Judge Peck of the United States Bankruptcy Court is anticipated to hear the application to put the works up at auction.

The WSJ article reports that:

"Included among the artwork is a piece from Mr. Hirst's "We've Got Style" series of cabinet sculptures and Mr. Warhol's "Young Woman With Halo of Birds," as well works by Maya Lin, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg."

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Something is rotten in the State of France.

Only a day after five paintings were stolen from a Paris art museum, five pictures including a Picasso were stolen from the home of an art collector in Marseille. The owner was also "beaten up" according to an account in "Another art heist in France," as seen on www.cbc.ca.

The article also notes that thieves made off with 30 paintings from a villa in Marseille last January. 

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The New York Times recently posted a very interesting blog about the rise and fall in the value of art and whether art is a worthwhile long-term investment.  The post is here:

roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/can-art-be-priceless-in-rocky-times/

One of the more interesting observations is made by Donald Kuspit, a professor of art history at S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook, who noted that certain artists are now in the cult of celebrity as much as the pantheon of great artists. 

Kuspit states:

"The name is the high-priced, desirable, one-of-a-kind commodity, not the work, which has a certain incidental relationship to it. This has to do with the celebrity culture: artists have been absorbed into its spectacle. Their creativity has been appropriated by it, making every celebrity seem like a great artist in the making, and every artist a celebrity in the making, aspiring to make spectacular art.

The cult of celebrities among artists has replaced that of heroes. As long ago as 1961, the historian Daniel Boorstin observed, “The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark.” Picasso and Giacometti are avant-garde heroes to art historians; to the market they are big names, amplified by money as well as the media. It is this that gives their art surplus value well beyond its aesthetic value. "

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