Both the Louvre and the UK government have blocked the sale and export of two paintings which they deem to be ‘national treasures’. By doing so, the Louvre and a UK museum will be given the opportunity to raise the necessary funds to purchase the respective paintings.
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During the final three years of his life, French conceptual artist Yves Klein (1928-1962) created nine “empty zones” (invisible and intangible areas of empty space existing only in conceptual terms) which could only be purchased with pure gold. The buyer was then presented with a receipt, which could either be set on fire in a ritual between artist and owner, or preserve it, meaning that the immaterial purchase would be transferrable. One of these receipts is now coming up for sale at Sotheby’s, and its similarities to the modern-day NFT are so notable that Sotheby’s are going so far as to accept not pure gold, but cryptocurrency for it.
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Jean-Siméon Chardin’s (1699-1779) painting of a delectable stack of strawberries fetched €24 million (£20 million) with fees at Artcurial in Paris last week, smashing the French artist’s auction record.
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In the last year alone, the explosive success of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) has left many in the contemporary artworld baffled to say the least. But is crypto-art really ushering a new age of creativity or does it simply lack substance?
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A documentary was premiered last week at the South by Southwest film festival exploring the puzzling theft of Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre (1955) painting from the University of Arizona, Tuscon. The film, which is directed by Allison Otto, proposes that the couple may have stolen the work not for money, but simply because they loved the painting.
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A long-lost masterpiece by Antonio Canova (1757-1822), found in 2002 when it was sold at a garden centre auction for £5,200, is now worth between a staggering £5 million and £8million. 200 years a after its completion, the sculpture will be put up for auction again this summer at Christie’s.
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has announced that they will be deaccessioning a bronze sculpture in their collection, which will be sold at Christie’s this May. Whilst the estimate of the work is only available upon request, it is anticipated that it could fetch around $30 million, which would make it by far the highest valued object the museum has ever sold.
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For the very first time, tens of thousands of Timbuktu’s ancient manuscripts have been captured in a virtual gallery called ‘Mali Magic’. Collectively the documents represent centuries of African and Islamic scholarship, as well as remarkable manuscript artwork.
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The abandoned vessel of legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) was one of the greatest undiscovered shipwrecks in recent history. Lost for 107 years, the Endurance had sunk 3,008 meters beneath the Antarctic Sea. A team of scientists finally found the wreck, looking just as it did the day it vanished over a century ago.
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“Punk It!”, the first evening sale at Sotheby’s dedicated exclusively to CryptoPunk NFTs (non-fungible tokens), was mysteriously withdrawn at the request of the consignor. As the crowd enthusiastically gathered in New York, and the sale’s live-stream opened to viewers around the world, the seller tweeted “nvm [never mind], decided to hodl”.
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