“A five-foot-tall Picasso was sold by a victim of Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme last night at Christie’s International for $14.6 million, easing the mood from the day before at Sotheby’s, when one of the painter’s works flopped. … The star lot lifted the total to $102.8 million,” but the sale’s “tally was still Christie’s lowest for Impressionist and modern art in New York since 2004.”
Tag: 05.07.09
$3M Painting Joins Russia’s Catalogue of Fraudulent Works
“Russian art experts have listed as a fake a painting that Christie’s International sold as a $3 million work by Boris Kustodiev. The picture is on the latest installment of a list of 900 works identified as fraudulent by a Russian government culture agency. The 100 new additions include three allegedly by Russian masters sold by Christie’s and rival Sotheby’s over the past decade.”
Coming To Blows Over The Israeli/Palestinian Samson And Delilah
Michael Kimmelman: “From where I stood it seemed touch and go whether the Jewish businessman was actually going to slug the chief of the Flanders Opera, Aviel Cahn, a young Swiss-born Jew (a glass-jawed bantamweight, by the looks of him) in an ascot and important glasses.”