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The Headlines
AUCTION ACTION. Sotheby’s in New York sold $303.9 million-worth of modern art yesterday evening, while Phillips netted $115.2 million from their modern and contemporary sale held just beforehand. But as ARTnews’ Daniel Cassady reports, there is still a sense of caution from buyers who are showing demand for exceptional works, but are sensitive to price. At Sotheby’s, that meant solid results, led by a $48.4 million Matisse, but noticeable pauses between bids suggested a cautious market mood. “Competition is very tempered,” one New York advisor said. Earlier at Phillip’s, on the other hand, the auction house’s team “appeared joyous,” writes Julie Brener Davich for ARTnews. The presale estimate of $84.2 million was the highest since 2022, and the sales average lot value of $2.9 million is more than double the $1.4 million average last May. Nevertheless, several works sold below their low estimates. Ultimately, Phillips did best at “selling works by living artists on the secondary market, unattainable on the primary market, said Brener Davich. Cue the frenzied bidding for Joseph Yaeger’s 2021 watercolor, There Is a Light and It Always Goes Out, which went for a record $477,300, against a $60,000 estimate. Similarly, works by 20th-century female artists such as Olga de Amaral and Lee Bontecou exceeded expectations.
MUSICAL NOTRE DAME WINDOWS. Yesterday, a Paris judge rejected a request to suspend the removal of six 19th-century stained-glass windows designed by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, for the purposes of replacing them with contemporary ones by artist Claire Tabouret and glassmakers Simon-Marq, announced the Paris Administrative Court. The judge said that since the new, government-commissioned windows could conceivably be taken down in the future, and the originals would be carefully preserved, the endeavor was not irreversible, and therefore did not meet the requirements for an “urgent” suspension of the project, which the administrative judge is tasked with determining. The judge did not rule on whether the controversial project, vetoed by the National Commission of Patrimony and Architecture, was legal. The heritage groups Sites & Monuments and SOS Paris filed a complaint earlier this month, demanding that the judge stop the project from moving forward, arguing that the removal of the ornate windows made in 1864 violated the cathedral’s protected status and the Venice Charter for monument conservation. They also insisted that Tabouret’s designs “would fit awkwardly into the building,” and “disrupt the overall harmony of the space.” The groups said they would continue in their legal efforts to block the project. “It’s a half-disappointment, because the rejection is not based on the absence of serious doubt regarding the legality of the decision, but on the absence of urgency,” one of two conditions needed for a suspension, stated Sites & Monuments on social media. “We are obviously continuing our action on the merits, with good hope!”
The Digest
Art Basel has appointed Iraqi curator Wassan Al-Khudhairi as artistic director of Art Basel Qatar’s 2027 edition. [press release]
The October theft of France’s crown jewels from the Louver will be the subject of a new feature film directed by Roman Gavras. [Le Figaro]
The German painter Harald Metzkes, who was known as “the Cézannist of Prenzlauer Berg,” has died at age 97. [dpa]
British businessman David Sainsbury is donating £91.2 million ($122.23) to renovate the Sainsbury Centre museum in Norwich, England, making it one of the largest donations to a UK museum and signaling a “boom” in large private donations to the arts. [Financial Times]
Artist Bharti Kher has won a commission from Powerhouse Parramatta museum for a monumental sculpture of stacked heads, due to open later this year in Parramatta, Western Sydney. [ArtAsiaPacific]
A new contemporary art fair dedicated to smell, called Olfacta Art Fair, will open in Turin from 18 to 20 September. [Artribune]
The Kicker
NINA SIMONE’S HOLY CHEWING GUM. For some die-hard fans, their obsession with pop stars is something of a religion, and at times, an art form. A new exhibit titled “Holy Pop” taps into that spirit at London’s Somerset House, with “shrines” to the likes of Dolly Parton, Prince, Spice Girls, and Nina Simone, to name a few. The show doesn’t hold back, with examples like Simone’s chewed gum sitting at the center of a dramatically lit pedestal, like a religious relic. (We imagine it has long lost its flavor.) Other items range from dried, disintegrating leaves found from Parton’s front garden, cans of soft drinks endorsed by the Spice Girls, and personal belongings of graffiti artist Tox26. How seriously does the exhibition take itself? “Walking around the exhibition is funny, moving and occasionally disconcerting,” writes the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis. Indeed, thanks to the success of the blockbuster “David Bowie” Is exhibit at the V&A, “the canon has tipped into feeling more pop-cultural friendly,” says curator Tory Turk. “The curators are no longer experts: the fans are citizen curators.” The show also defends the notion of fandom and collecting physical objects, often considered “crazy,” when it actually “serves a real emotional purpose,” says Turk, adding: “It means a lot to love. That’s what makes us human.”
