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Auction week in New York came to a close with PHILLIPS de PURY & Co.'s Evening Sale of Contemporary Art. The sale was something of a mixed bag, with most lots selling around the expected prices, but one-fifth of the 40 lots on offer failed to reach their reserve prices. The sale earned just over $7 million with the premiums factored in. This total was in line with presale estimates, although the 77.50 % sell-through rate must have been mildly disappointing for the auction house. ... read more...

Andy Warhol is dead. Long live Andy Warhol. The Pop master is still making headlines more than 20 years after being buried in Pittsburgh. We witnessed the TunaFish Disaster disaster the previous night at Christie's, with the early silver painting becoming a high-profile, high-priced dud. So it was particularly thrilling for fans of Warhol, as well as those who profit from the sale of his work, to see Sotheby's blowout sale of 200 One Dollar Bills (1962) for a hammer price of $39 million. ... read more...

The collective sigh of relief was almost audible last night at Christie's as its Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale came to a close. Despite the current atmosphere and fewer star lots on offer, the sale managed an 85% sell through rate, with 39 of the 46 lots on offer finding new homes. Overall the evening brought $74,151,500 in total sales, an admirable result that was within the expected range, and 21 lots brought prices in excess of one million dollars. ... read more...

Paul McCarthy (below) is not your typical Dirty Old Artist. Even while baring his own psyche and, in the process, our collective angst, McCarthy can make the transgressive seem almost sweet. In his hands, beloved fairy tales are inverted and examined for all of their base undercurrents and retold in performance, sculpture or two-dimensional works. For "White Snow," McCarthy tackles the narrative of Snow White through drawings and collages, in both the old German and Disney versions.
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Urs Fischer got tongues wagging last week in New York. The 38-year-old, Swiss-born New Yorker has, with the encouragement of curator Massimiliano Gioni invaded The New Museum with his provocative and spectacular sculptural notions. Fischer, for anyone who hasn't heard, is the artist who in 2007 transformed Gavin Brown's gallery into what amounted to a giant grave by having the entire gallery floor bulldozed. Visitors were invited to descend into the institution's hole at their own risk. ... read more...

Christie's and Sotheby's kicked off the season with smaller Contemporary Sales this week. Neither auction was what one would call a bell-ringer, but both sales saw admirable results and few disasters. Many in attendance at Christie's were there to witness the sale of the cover lot, an Andy Warhol flower painting created in 1964. An almost comical exodus occurred just after the hammer came down and a third of the people briskly left the room - so many, in fact, that the auctioneer could be heard ... read more...

Phillips de Pury's contemporary evening sale fetched a total of $7.8 million with 72% of lots sold. There were a surprising number of empty seats, and bidding in the room, sorry to say, was sporadic, but there were several triumphs, as works by Rosemarie Trockel, Mike Kelley, Mark Grotjahn, Zeng Fanzhi, and Feng Zhengjie all surpassed their high presale estimates. It appears, though, that the days of stockbrokers fighting over a Vanessa Beecroft female nude photo or paying $150,000 for a cheesy ... read more...

This week's Contemporary sale at Christie's was, by any current measure, a triumph. Fears about the market were allayed by the accuracy of the presale estimates and the auction house's obvious efforts in convincing consignors to keep realistic reserves. Just five of the 54 lots on offer failed to find new homes--that's a 91% sell-through rate--and 16 lots attracted bids which surpassed their high estimates.
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Sotheby's, still reeling from last week's high-profile failure to sell two of its Impressionist and Modern Evening Sale star lots, was determined to remain focused and upbeat at last night's Contemporary Evening Sale, which fetched an 81 % sale rate, better than last year, as Tobias Meyer was happy to tell us. The total take for the evening was $47 million, just under the $52 million low estimated total. The only celebs in the house were actor Owen Wilson and disgraced "writer" James Frey, which... read more...

Two one-person exhibitions by young painters opened this week in New York. Hernan Bas is showing seven new paintings at Lehmann Maupin's downtown space under the title "The Dance of the Machine Gun & other forms of unpopular _expression", while at Goff + Rosenthal Iraqi painter Ahmed Alsoudani is showing several large works from a new series that depicts groups of people during wartime in a challenging mix of charcoal, acrylic and oil. ... read more...

Bye-Bye Biennial... hello Millennial. With its impressive new exhibition of fifty young artists from twenty-five countries, the New Museum, although at pains to deny it, has gone head-to-head with the Whitney's uptown Biennial. 'The Generational: Younger Than Jesus', which opened this week on the Bowery is, despite the lame title, so well conceived and exciting overall that it makes a few recent biennials seem quaint in comparison. ... read more...

When Roger Ballen talks about his body of work, it is seldom in terms of social commentary. If the personal history of one of his sitters seems unavoidable, Ballen addresses the narrative only in the broadest possible way. To the artist, the images of small-town South Africa contain interplay of light and dark, painterly lines and the secrets that shadows obscure and reveal. For the rest of us, they're unforgettable. He talks here about his work, including a new book 'Boarding House', published ... read more...

The results of the three Contemporary Art auctions held this week in New York can be looked at from opposing perspectives. One might say that a 50-60 per cent sales rate for artwork is not bad given the economic downturn; the market clearly hasn't fizzled out completely. However, many collectors and dealers were unconsciously emitting low-frequency groans as lot after lot was bought in. Phillips de Pury & Co went first, selling just over half of its lots, with Kelley Walker (below), Paul Morriso... read more...

Despair? Not really. Nervous tension? No doubt. It was impossible to miss the hushed blanket of gloom that wrapped this year's Armory Show in New York. At last year's VIP preview for the event, several galleries had sold out their booths in under an hour. The Armory preview on Thursday saw gallery workers steeling themselves against the obvious indicators and patiently waiting for investors to come forward. The artists themselves are certainly aware of the downturn, and several prominent works a... read more...

It's Liz Renay month here in New York. "How to Attract Men", the stunning show at Deitch Projects put together by artist Scott Ewalt, consists of paintings, costumes and artifacts from the Burlesque legend's iconic life. In between compiling recipes, making paintings and recording LPs, Liz Renay, who died in 2007 at age 80, trysted with the bold-faced names of her generation - Bob Hope, Mickey Mantle and Marlon Brando to name just a few. The opening was stacked with artistic types who came to se... read more...

Among our New York contributor's favoruite cultural moments of the year are Olafur Eliasson's New York City Waterfalls, Paul Chan's '7 Lights' show at the New Museum, the Dark Fair orchestrated by Matthew Higgs and Gavin Brown, Isa Genzken's solo show at Hauser & Wirth in London, and Brandon Nastanski's first public project "Speakeasy," a quaint, dark mini bar behind a bookcase that revealed itself when someone pulled a certain book from the shelf that was attached to a rope. ... read more...

Not to be missed if you are in the Big Apple - a survey of the past 25 years of Nayland Blake's art at Location One (below), Karlheinz Weinberger's images of Zurich teens in the 60s and 70s, paintings by Barkley L Hendricks at the Studio Museum, and photographs of New York's Lower East Side by Zoe Leonard at Dia at the Hispanic Society.

Elizabeth Peyton has been painting from live models in recent years and frequently her art world friends, like Matthew Barney, Rob Pruitt, Spencer Sweeney and Piotr Uklanski are honored with a portrait. (And I'm told some sitters have turned their gifts from Peyton into summer homes.) Shortly after the US election, a new painting of Michelle Obama was added to the exhibition, which is on until 11 January 2009.
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Mixed results at the contemporary sales in New York, described by collector Eli Broad as 'a half-price sale'; another new contemporary art gallery set to open in Moscow; artist Adam Neate gives away art worth over £1 million; Hezbollah protests against Gehry museum in Jerusalem; a London gallery is attacked for 'offensive' images of Muslim women by artist Sarah Maple; the bankrupt Lehmann Brothers sells its art collection; Tracey Emin leads Titian campaign (below); plus the latest prizes and aw... read more...

Bright spots? Not many. The Contemporary Evening sale at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday, despite some prized lots on offer, was a disappointment even for those who were anticipating the worst. Even works by Basquiat and Freud couldn't buck the downward trend, and when works by Murakami, Stella and Richter were passed over by the room and the very few phone bidders, it was impossible to ignore the sense that the expensive artistic party of the past several years was winding down. ... read more...

Catherine Opie's early '90s breakthrough body of work now hangs on the walls of the Guggenheim, the subjects - tattooed body modification devotees, gender-fucking dykes, and S/M playmates - looking like
exotic specimens pinned up in a display case. The photographer, acting as a sort of noble PT Barnum, empowered rather than exploited her cohorts among the Los Angeles and San Francisco Modern Primitives, a crowd that embraced the word "queer" and pierced for pleasure. I'm lucky enough to know ma... read more...

The iPhone is the new navel. Everybody who's anybody has one, some have the capacity to hold more than others and they accumulate lint like crazy. Judging from his current show at Gavin Brown's Enterprise, Rob Pruitt has been gazing at his a lot lately. The entire West Village gallery has been festooned with enlarged images from Pruitt's cell phone camera--inside and out. Images of dinner discussions with artist friends, puppies at art openings, "Brokeback Mountain" stills, rotting pumpkins and ... read more...

Among the exhibitions not to miss in New York this month are: a group show inspired by birds, worth the trip for a brilliant photograph by Bert Teunissen (below), a chance to see new work by Amanda Ross-Ho in a mixed display at John Connelly Presents, an exploration of sexual fantasies in 'The Guys We Would Fuck', and a group show at Cheim & Read which takes its cue from a quote by Louise Bourgeois - 'I Won't Grow Up'. ... read more...

The common but somehow unexpected Black Squirrels is a dirty pest to some, furry and appealing to others. Their dark "outsider" status is frequently seen as a Darwinian form of nobility. Several cities in this country claim to be the "Official Home of the Black Squirrel," among them, Santa Cruz, California. Kent State University has held a Black Squirrel Festival to celebrate the rodent. For L.A. artist Mario Ybarra, Jr. a black squirrel functions as logo, surrogate and muse. His fictional soci... read more...

L.A. Artist Chris Burden, like an Art World pharaoh, has erected a memorable monument to his manhood in New York's Rockefeller Center. The 65-foot tall freestanding obelisk/skyscraper is made of over a million Erector set pieces. (For anyone who doesn't know, the Erector set is a butch, American baby boom era construction toy kit. It came complete with metal parts, nuts, bolts and a wrench and was, of course, for boys only.) Burden re-imagines the towers of his youth in "What My Dad Gave Me." Th... read more...

Gather round and Tala Madani will paint you a tale. The Iranian-born artist, though she has spent most of her life away from her homeland, carries on a Persian penchant for storytelling. Narratives contained within each of her canvases are solemn, dark and humorous in equal measure. Madani explores the socio-religious based rituals of an imaginary world of Muslim men caught inside comic book panels of their own making. Having recently added painterly animations to her repertoire - violently hila... read more...

Robert Rauschenberg (below) died at 82 this week (we will publish a full obituary by Jerry Saltz next week); new records set and estimates exceeded at the contemporary sales in New York this week (read Doug McClemont's report on the Christies sale below); Asian art expert dies in custody; criminal charges brought against Russian curator; 114 job losses at the Getty; the Gap launches a series of artists limited T-shirts - plus the latest appointments in the art world. ... read more...

When compared to the business-as-usual sophistication of Christie's and Sotheby's, an auction at Philips de Pury & Co. is a downright party. We never know when auctioneer Simon de Pury will drop into French numerics or lose control of the noise level in the room. The crowd is decidedly younger and it yearns to display its fearlessness and wealth. Bidding comes from all corners; increments are wacky. Records are often set at Phillips due to acute cases of old-fashioned auction fever. I've witness... read more...

Since it is auction week and we're addressing art in financial rather than aesthetic terms, let me start off by saying that Sotheby's stock rose nearly eight percent after its blockbuster sale of Contemporary work this Thursday. The firm presided over a total of $320 million dollars in a single evening. I'm pleased when art does well at auction, but auctions invariably give birth to some head-shakers. Who is bidder number 12 who paid over $3 million dollars for a Lee Krasner monstrosity entitle... read more...

At Tuesday night's sale of Contemporary Art at Christie's, the super-rich dutifully made their way to their assigned seats and the news cameras rolled. For the most part, estimates by the auction house were on target and the list of artists for sale predictable. The evening, with all its journalists and rubberneckers, felt strangely uneventful. We're used to twenty million-dollar Freud paintings and works by Koons opening at six million. Records were set for several artists, sure. But at this po... read more...

Not to miss this month are Boo Ritson's sitters covered in 'frosting bondage', Tomma Abts' abstract paintings, Anne Hardy's constructions of detritus-filled spaces, Brandon Herman's masterful take on budding sexuality, and Matthew Sleeth's exploration of the nature of photography itself.

Tamy Ben-Tor's biting, full-frontal performances are embodiments of our collective fears and the creepiness of prejudice. For "Judensau," her latest live artwork, the Israel-born artist brings to life various characters in several languages. Speaking in tongues such as Yiddish, German or English the talented Ben-Tor utilizes voice modulation to great effect. The script, which we often don't understand anyway, is largely beside the point. We know all we need to know about her characters from the ... read more...

Doug McClemont reports on the highs and lows of this year's Armory Show.

Marcel Dzama's work, though still irreverent, lately has taken a distinctly darker, arguably political turn. Actual terrorists have been added to the list stock Dzama characters. And victims, from Abu Ghraib hooded prisoners to innocent goats on ladders, are now center stage in his mysterious little theatrical tableaux.

Ana Finel Honigman talks to the young 'gallerista', Sara Tecchia (below) who opened her gallery in New York two years ago. She represents an unusually diverse roster of artists and runs the gallery with an openness uncommon amongst most dealers. 'I get artists' submissions every day and I respond to everybody. I always respond. It is my set rule: My office door is always open to artists.' ... read more...

'For those who say "you've seen one George Condo, you've seen 'em all," look again. For his current show the painter takes on the most common subject in the history of art, Jesus Christ on the cross, and still manages to thwart expectations.' Also among Doug McClemont's favourite shows in NYC this month are Matt Lienes at Clementine Gallery, a group show exploring the theme of power at Foxy Productions, Rashid Johnson at Nicole Klagsbrun, and another engaging group show at John Connelly Presents... read more...

It's Whitney Week in New York, as the 2008 Biennal opens and the bickering commences. A portion of the pleasure derived from each Biennial, at least for me, is the spectacle of the sycophants and haters coming out of the woodwork simultaneously. Every two years they bury the exhibition in an avalanche of discussion concerning its "controversial" nature. But other than the usual who-was-left-out or why-was-that-person-included, the 2008 edition is relatively free of eye-rolling debate. Curators H... read more...

Culture king Jeffrey Deitch and French filmmaker Michel Gondry are a notable team. Both are innovators working within systems that value product above all and neither can resist the urge to put on a show. This month in New York, Deitch has allowed his art gallery to be converted into a sort of makeshift MGM back lot, with sets from Gondry's mainstream release "Be Kind Rewind," reconstructed for use by amateur filmmakers, cinema buffs, downtown notables or anyone with a video camera and some time... read more...

To stand in front of a photographic portrait by Katy Grannan is to gain an instantaneous clue as to what it means to be human. The rich, fluid concepts of identity and self-perception are at the core of each image. She reveals her subjects, as Jan Avgikos puts it in the introduction to the monograph 'Model American', "in the act of gearing up to be themselves." ... read more...

Adam Faramawy, who was born in Dubai in 1981 and studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, describes his work as 'resolutely representational'. His videos display a fixation with fantasy and the fantastic, expressing ideas concerning what he calls 'transmissions of knowledge demonstrating fluid or floating identities'. His work brings together a wide range of ideas and interests from arabesque architecture, Sufi theology and ritual to psychedelia, grunge, YouTube and gothic. As he writes about hi... read more...

Saatchi Online magazine's regular New York correspondent Doug McClemont (below) looks back over the 10 stand-out cultural moments of the year, including the new New Museum, Isa Genzken at David Zwirner, Daphne Fitzpatrick at Bellwether and the recreation of The Cock at Jeffrey Deitch's Soho gallery.

On Tuesday 18 December "And Who Are You? Work from Saatchi Online" opened at the at the Sara Tecchia Roma New York gallery. Saatchi Online's first exhibition in New York presents the work of 12 artists based in New York, all of whom are registered on the website, and whose work explores questions about how the established art world parcels out or responds to value, fame, favoritism, integrity and pretension. Read on for a link to the New York Sun's article about the show.
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The winner of the December Your Studio competition is C Tulay from Erzurum in Turkey. Critic Doug McClemont, who chose the winning entry, comments: 'If the pixel is the new brushstroke, Tulay isn't afraid to let his show. I love the existential humor of the story told here: purple men forced into a permanent dangle from an unseen beam or diving board. Tulay uses the Your Studio tools wisely, letting the digital brush dictate forms instead of trying to make them do things their etch-a-sketch limi... read more...

Kurt Kauper is known for his romanticized, and sometimes quirky paeans to old-fashioned academic
portraiture, having exhibited a large canvas of a nude Cary Grant as well as a series entitled, "Diva
Fictions," his imagined composites of the faces, poses, traits, and costumes of female opera stars. Now
his show at Deitch Projects on Grand Street, "Everybody knew that Canadians were the best hockey
players," presents us with seven-foot-tall renderings of Bobby Orr, Derek Sanderson and other ice ho... read more...

The winner of the November Your Studio competition is Nelson McLeod whose 'hysterical characters', Emma Gray comments, 'are either hosing down the lawn with suspiciously yellow water, or they are like taking a leak! Either way, they look like fuzzy-edged versions of art work by Palm Springs artist Brian Calvin.' The Saatchi Gallery will donate £500 in his name to Children's Hospice Care,
Chestnut Tree House, West Sussex, England. ... read more...

In contrast to the glacial pace and dry wit of the Evening sales at Sotheby's and Christies, the opening night sale at Phillips de Pury & Co. felt more like a frat party than an auction of expensive contemporary art. The excitement at being a part of the whole Art Market thing was palpable and the noise level was almost out-of-control. Fashionable younger women and men and hip dealers filled the room on 15th Street to capacity Thursday night, which was a rather welcome change from the Nancy Reag... read more...

I'm not saying I was blackballed, but my spot in the saleroom for the evening sale at Sotheby's this year was ceremoniously unavailable. It seems Sotheby's had "reconfigured" its saleroom space and I was now welcome to watch the 7th Floor auction action through a video monitor on the 2nd floor. Some in the know had suggested that it was my (accurate) observation last auction that there were no black people in the evening crowd. Or it might have been my, I thought complimentary, description of op... read more...

If you were one of the crepe-hangers who were betting that this would be the year that the contemporary art market came to its senses and corrected itself, you lost the bet. This week's Auction City started off with a solid sale of high end works for the evening sale at Christies with several records set and the majority of the pieces sold within presale estimates. Throughout the evening one had plenty of time to ponder questions about the market and the art itself. Who are the people willing to... read more...

Without question one of the most memorable shows of the Fall season was Daphne Fitzpatrick's "A Roll in the Hay" at Bellwether Gallery. In order to enter the gallery viewers must walk past 'the daily baguette' (below) outside, then climb a steep and seemingly pointless wooden ramp made of antique fir. Just when you reach the plateau at the top, you're descending down the other side in a sort of forced, precarious stroll into the gallery and Fitzpatrick's world. It's a kind of Alice-down-the-rabb... read more...

In an effort to draw still more artsy types to the ever-exapnding Williamsburg, the neighborhood's galleries have banded together for "Williamsburg Every Second," a late night gallery crawl on the second Friday of each month, consisting of performances, happenings, drinks and visual art. At Pierogi, Dawn Clements is exhibiting her massive sketches under the heading "Conditions of Desire;" Parker's Box has a show of new paintings by German artist Stefan Sehler; but it's the "Showroom" gallery tha... read more...