MARK ROTHKO : WHITE CENTER & ENTITLED

Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz ( 1903–1970), was a Latvian-born American painter and printmaker who is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he rejected not only the label but even being called an abstract painter. Rothko believed he was "producing an art that would last for 1,000 years". It was a sentiment that was in stark contrast to the new, brash, secularised art emerging in New York in the 1960s.

He emigrated with his mother and sister in the USA in 1913 and went to the New School of Design in 1923 , where one of his instructors was the artist Arshile Gorky.

In his important essay, "The Romantics Were Prompted" (1949), Rothko observed that the archaic artist found it necessary to create a group of intermediaries, monsters, hybrids, gods and demigods in much the same way that modern man found intermediaries in Fascism and the Communist Party.

Later Rothko labeled Pop-Art artists "charlatans and young opportunists" and wondered aloud during a 1962 exhibition of Pop Art whether the young artists were plotting to kill us all?

Rothko suffered from an aneurysm in 1968 and committed suicide in 1970. He was entered in Sharon Gardens in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, N.Y. Rothko believed he was "producing an art that would last for 1,000 years". Well, somebody said that before and it did not bring him luck.

This picture, an oil on canvas measuring 205 x 141 cm, was painted in 1950 and was for a long time in the propriety of David Rockefeller who put it for sale on auction at Sotheby's New York in 2007. It went for $ 72,8 million to an anonymous collector from Russia. At the end of the bidding, a bidder in the attendance said : "Someone had just bought a Rockfeller."

But times are changing for Rothko. The picture to the right below "Entitled" was on offer at Christie's NYC (NY) in November 2008 and reached only - if I may say- 506,500 dollars vs. a minimum estimate of 600,000-700,000. Talking about this picture Rothko said that he had a sort of religious experience while he made it. Entitled belongs to a series refered as Multiforms.

It is an oil on canvas (45.1 x 37.5 cm.) painted in 1947 (dated as 1946 on Betty Parsons Gallery label). Rothko used to like it very much.
It was first acquired by the Betty Parsons gallery, New York, in 1952. In 1976, it was exhibited in Tokyo's Seibu Museum of Art during the exhibit Three Decades of American Art selected by the Whitney Museum.

Having said that it is extremely difficult to justify the prices' difference between "Entitled" gone for half a million dollars and "White Center" acquired for over 70 million. Anybody who can come up with a satisfying explanation about this is welcomed to leave a comment. The only -although extremely expensive- justification is that White Center belonged from 1960 to 2007 to David Rockfeller, the 91-year-old retired chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank who purchased it for $8,500 from Eliza Bliss Parkinson, niece of a founder of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

Mrs. Parkinson had bought it a few months earlier from Sidney Janis, dealer of Mark Rothko.

THE GLOBAL ART MARKET : $ 55 BILLION ?

How big is the International Art Market ?
For Simon de Pury, Chairman of Phillips de Pury,
it is big like that...
But not big enough to prevent him
to sell a majority stake in his house to a Russian investor

According to an exhaustive survey made in 2007 by the European Fine Art Foundation (EFAF) which interviewed 3500 art dealers and 3000 auction houses in the world, the global art market was about $ 55 billion in 2006. Out of this total, the private art market (art dealers only) was $ 28.6 billion.

However for Simon de Pury, Chairman of Phillips de Pury New York, the private art market is at least four times bigger than the public art market. The same survey found that the art dealers concluded 1 million transactions in 2006 which makes an average transaction amount of about $28,600.

In 2007, Sotheby's and Christie's accounted for $12 billion of the global art market whose definitive figure is not yet known. Minor auction houses like Bonhams and Phillips de Pury accounted respectively for $ 600 million and $ 308 million. The five major German auction houses - Lempertz, Grisebach, Ketterer, Hampel and Neumeister- realized global sales of $ 231 million in 2007 while the French houses made $ 1.2 billion.
The volume of Fine Arts (paintings, drawings...) sales realized by Christie's and Sotheby's in 2007 was respectively of $ 5 billion and $ 3.7 billion. The volume of private sales achieved in 2007 by those two auction houses through their galleries and dealers was respectively of $ 730 million (+123%) and $ 542 million (+111%).

Finally the EFAF found that the global art market increased by 95% between 2002 and 2006 from $ 25.3 to $ 54.9 billion of which the USA represent 46% and the UK 27%.

NB : Simon de Pury sold in November 2008 a majority stake in his auction house to a very powerful Russian investor.

ZHANG XIAOGANG : A BIG FAMILY

Zhang Xiaogang is one of the major Contemporary Chinese painters. This "Big Family" painted by him in 1995 was bought by collector Maurice Saatchi, founder of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, who launched in London the Saatchi Gallery in partnership with Phillips auction house. Xiaogang's work was awarded the Bronze Prize at the 22nd São Paulo Biennial Exhibition in Brazil in 1994.

Born in 1958, influenced by the infamous Cultural Revolution of the 60s, Zhang Xiaogang has exhibited all over the worlds since the early 90s and is now one of the Chinese painters representative of the "new wave" or "Avant-Garde" who are taking in between $4 and $6 million a year. His work currently goes for more than 1 million dollar.

In 1980 he was a founding member, along with his contemporaries Zhang Qikai, Luo Zhongli, He Duoliing, and Ye Yongqing, of the ‘Weed Society’. It was a non-official painting group which held free uncensored art shows and had a great impact on society at the time.

Read this interview of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, colleague of Zhang, to learn more about the current conditions of artistic and political life in the China of the Olympic Games.

RAPHAELLA SPENCE : HIDDEN DREAMS

Raphaella Spence is an English painter born in London in 1978 who lived in France with her parents during her childhood. At age twelve her family moved definitively to Italy where she completed her studies at the St. Georges English School in Rome.

Influenced by views of the Umbrian countryside, Spence turned toward the creation of the Photorealist landscape. Her paintings are magnificent and extremely colourful. Her work goes for £ 7,500 to £ 13,700 ($13,800 to $25,200) making a very sound Art investment if you consider that she is only 30 years old. At 30 in 1911, Picasso was just emerging from poverty. But most of all Spence's paintings show that imitation is not forbidden anymore and that artists can paint what they see without being indicted for philistinism or academicism.

MONA LISA WORTH $ 10 BILLION ?

It's been estimated that "Mona Lisa" — if she ever made its way to the market — might sell for up to $10 billion, arguably to status-hungry official buyers in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, or Dubai.