jeudi 16 octobre 2008

American Pop Art From Art Price oct.2008

American Pop Art – the bubble is leaking air… [Sep 08]

The general price index for American Pop Art – the epicentre of art market speculation since the beginning of the decade – is showing signs of waning. Although Andy Warhol is the third most expensive post-war artist, along with Francis Bacon and Mark Rothko, auction sales of his works since the start of 2008 have been less successful… Could this be a first sign of market saturation?

Much publicised, the images created or reproduced by the Pop Artists instantly rendered their works "emblematic". Some used highly recognisable symbols and icons from the contemporary America of their era, while others created works of art from standard consumer products carrying appeal for a very wide audience. Screenprints of the cult images were reproduced in large numbers and widely circulated. In theory, Pop Art should be available to a very broad public; however, the prices paid for its stars over recent years, particularly for the unique pieces, make the movement's art inaccessible for most buyers. Having seen its price index acquire a massive 75% in 2007, the momentum appears to be waning this year: between January and September 2008 the movement's index has lost 31%.

Over the last ten years, the individual price indices of Robert RAUSCHENBERG, Andy WARHOL, Roy LICHTENSTEIN, Claes Thure OLDENBURG and Tom WESSELMANN have gained between +320% and +540%!
The impressive figures generated by Warhol's pieces are far in excess of the price records generated by the other artists from the Pop Art movement. In May 2007, Warhol's Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) set his all-time record when it fetched 64 million dollars (more than 47 million euros) at Christie’s in New York. Already in 2006, 43 public sales of Warhol's works generated sums above the 1 million dollars threshold, 8 more than the star of the market Pablo Picasso… In 2007, no less than 68 Warhol pieces from the 1960s and 80s fetched sums above the million-dollar line pushing his price index up 89% in just one year! Such inflation encourages speculation. For example in November 2007 the actor Hugh Grant sold a Warhol Liz (portrait of Elizabeth Taylor created in 1963) for $21m at Christie's having paid only $3.25m just 6 years earlier and after a Liz from the same series fetched only $11.25m at Sotheby’s in 2005. Another example: Are you different? a small painting executed in 1985-1986 and acquired for the equivalent of €26,000 on 10 February 2005 in London fetched nearly 119,000 euros in June 2007.
After this exceptional year, Andy Warhol's price index appears to be relaxing: –5% between January and September 2008, with growing signs of weakness in the market. For example, a version of Campbell's Tomato Soup (red and black) fetched €682,000 in May 2007. Nine months later, an exactly identical piece sold for €66,000 less.

Jasper JOHNS is second on the Pop Art price record podium (but still $48.5m behind Warhol's record…) with $15.5m for his Figure 4, a sale that also took place on 16 May 2007. During the same month a new record was also set for Rauschenberg when his mixed technique Photograph from 1959 fetched $9.5m (roughly €7m) at Sotheby’s NY. Two days after his death on 12 May 2008 his Overdrive (1963) set a new record at Sotheby’s. Aside from the genuinely exceptional pieces, buyers have shown a certain restraint with respect to Rauschenberg's lesser quality works. For example, Blue Smile, Waterworks Series, a large mixed technique has already been bought in twice this year at Tajan; once with a low estimate of €80,000 and the second time with a threshold of €60,000.
Even if the market is showing some signs of contraction since the beginning of the year, it is becoming increasingly difficult to acquire the major works of the key figures in the Pop Art movement. One solution for less wealthy buyers is to focus on the multiples; but the market for the multiples is also showing signs of deflation.

In principle, prints, lithographs and other good quality multiples can be acquired at affordable prices. Apart from Andy Warhol's famous silk screen prints that usually fetch 5 or even 6-figure numbers, the multiples created by Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselman, Jasper Johns, Jim Dine and James Rosenquist are often accessible for less than 5,000 euros. However, care should be taken because the price index for these works is also beginning to deflate. Over the first 9 months of 2008 the values of these products have contracted 20%. Examples of this price deflation are becoming increasingly widespread. Beautiful Bedroom Kate, a Tom Wesselmann screenprint produced in a series of 90 copies, fetched €16,000 - twice its estimated price - at Sotheby’s London in September 2007. The version sold last June in Germany generated went under the hammer for only €9,000. A similar story can be traced with Roy Lichtenstein's multiples most of which have posted depreciation during 2008. His illustrious Brushstroke Still Life with Lamp - a screenprint with magna on aluminum panel inset in a wood frame and produced in 24 copies - sold for €342,000 in June 2007, then €502,000 in February 2008, and more recently fetched only €315,000 in July.

Aside from the observed value depreciation, buyer reticence has also been expressed by a sharp increase in the bought-in rate which has risen from 16% in 2007 to 37% for the first-half of 2008. And yet there has also been a 26% contraction in the number of lots presented for sale… a fact that should have provided support for this market where demand is focused on a limited supply. In short, these signs of market weakness on a segment that is normally very buoyant are fairly worrying for the other segments of the market that are traditionally the most speculative such as 'current' and 'emerging' art.

samedi 11 octobre 2008

Le Clezio Prix Nobel Congratulations

J.M.G. Le Clézio (1940-)

One of the most translated modern French authors, whose first novel appeared when he was only 23 years old. Due to his early experimentalist approach to novel, Le Clézio has been counted among the avant-garde writers, but actually his work is difficult to pin down. Le Clézio's themes are cross-cultural. He moves freely, without restriction, from one continent to another, fusing ideas and images from different kinds of literature and culture. Le Clézio was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2008.

"La guerre a commencé. Personne ne sait plus où, ni comment, mais c'est ainsi. Elle est derrière la tête et elle souffle. La guerre des crimes et des insultes, la furie des regards, l'explosion de la pensée des cerveaux. Elle est là, ouverte sur le monde, elle le couvre de son réseau de fils électriques, Chaque seconde, elle progresse, elle arrache quelque chose et le réduit en cendres." (from La Guerre, 1970)

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940. Le Clézio's father, born in Mauritius, was a doctor, who moved from England to British Guyana, and then to Nigeria. Before the family was reunited, he lived years in Africa.

Le Clézio was raised in France. His early childhood Le Clézio spent in Roquebillière, a small village near Nice. At the age of eight Le Clézio started to write poetry and read comics. In 1947 he traveled to Nigeria with his mother and brother, spending there a happy year without school. Later the author depicted his childhood in the semi-autobiographical novel Onitsha (1991), in which a young boy sails with his mother to Africa, where his English father is chasing his own dreams.

Le Clézio was educated at schools in Nice, where his mother settled during the war. In 1957 Le Clézio passed his baccalauréat in literature and philosophy. He then studied at the Bristol University, at the University of London, and Institut d'Études Littéraires in Nice. In 1964 he received his M.A. from the University of Aix-en-Provence. Le Clézio obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Perpignan.

Le Clézio married in 1960 Rosalie Piquemal, half-French, half-Polish; they had one daughter. After divorce Le Clézio remarried. From this marriage he has also one daughter.

As a writer Le Clézio made his breakthrough with his first novel, Le procès-verbal (1963), which was awarded the Théophraste Renaudot Prize. The work introduced one of his central themes, the flight from commonly accepted ways of thought into extreme states of mind. Adam Pollo, the protagonist, is a sensitive youg man, who wanders around the town, much like a stray dog, and after making an agitated speech to an apathetic crowd eventually ends up in a mental hospital for a period. The mood of the novel has been compared to that of Camus's Stranger and Sartre's Naisea.

Le Clézio's writing is simultaneously clear and intensive, impressionistic and controlled, nostalgic and contemporary. In an interview Le Clézio once said, that his favorite novelist are Stevenson and Joyce – noteworthy both exiled writers. Often his protagonists are loners, who try to find ways to cope with the modern life and technology, or come into conflict with urban surroundings.

Le procès-verbal was soon translated into several languages, among others into Finnish. In spite of his international fame, Le Clézio chose to stay away from fashionable literary circles, saying in an article in 1965: "Not yet sure if writing is a good way of expression." He taught at a Buddhist University in Thailand in 1966-67, at the University of Mexico, and at the Boston University, University of Texas, Austin, and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. From 1973 Le Clézio and his Moroccan wife Jemia divided their time between France, the U.S. and the island of Mauritius; Le Clézio has called Mauritius his "little fatherland". Le Clézio has also traveled in Nigeria and Japan and published translations of Mayan sacred texts. The last years Le Clézio has lived mainly in New Mexico.

Through Le Clézio's novels the sun and the sea, light and water, are recurrent images. From 1969 to 1973 Le Clézio lived among the Embera Indians in Panama. Haï (1971), written during this period, is a lyrical account of the author's experience which, as he has confessed, changed his whole life. On the whole, the natural environment, animate and inanimate, forms a kind of philosophical, unifying ground for Le Clézio's themes.

Le Clézio's constant travels are reflected in the settings of his books. Through his own experience he has described the clash of cultures, and the unequal side of globalization, the domination of Western rationalism. In Désert (1980), which received the Grand Prix Paul Morand, a young nomad woman, Lalla, from the Sahara becomes a famous photo model, but she returns to the desert to give birth to her child. A parallel story tells of the crushing of the Tuaregs in the beginning of the 20th century by the French colonizers.

For further reading: Conversations avec J.-M. G. Le Clézio by P. Lhoste (1971); World Authors 1950-1970, ed. by John Wakeman (1975); J.-M. G. Le Clézio by Jennifer Waelti-Walters (1977); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993); Le Clézio ou la quête du désert by Simone Domange (1993); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999) - For further information: Intersected Pasts and Problematic Futures by Karen D. Levy

Selecter works:

  • Le Procès-Verbal, 1963 - The Interrogation (tr. Daphne Woodward, 1964) - Raportti Aatamista (suom. Olli-Matti Ronimus)
  • Le Jour où Beaumont fit connaissance avec sa douleur, 1964
  • La Fièvre, 1965 - Fever (tr. Daphne Woodward, 1966) - Kuume (suom. Leila Adler)
  • Le Déluge, 1966 - The Flood (tr. Peter Green, 1968)
  • L'Extase matérielle, 1966
  • Terra amata, 1968 - Terra Amata (tr. Barbara Bray, 1969)
  • Le Livre des fuites, 1969 - The Book of Flights (tr. Simon Watson Taylor, 1972)
  • La Guerre, 1970 - War (tr. 1973)
  • Haï, 1971
  • Les Géants, 1973 - The Giants (tr. Simon Watson Taylor, 1975)
  • Mydriase, 1973
  • Voyages de l'autre côté, 1975
  • translator: Les Prophéties du chilam Balam, 1976
  • Voyage aux pays des arbres, 1978
  • L'Inconnu sur la terre, 1978
  • Vers les Icebergs, 1978
  • Mondo et autres histoires, 1978 - film: Mondo (1996), dir. by Tony Gatlif, starring Ovidiu Balan, Philippe Petit, Pierrette Fesch, Jerry Smith
  • Désert, 1980 - Autiomaa (suom. Marjatta Ecaré)
  • Trois Villes saintes, 1980
  • Lullaby, 1980
  • La Ronde et autres faits divers, 1982 - The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts = La ronde et autres faits divers (translated by C. Dickson)
  • Celui qui'n avait jamais vu la mer; La Montagne du dieu vivant, 1984
  • translator: Relation de Michocan, 1984
  • Le Chercheur d'or, 1985 - The Prospector (tr. by Carol Marks)
  • Villa aurore; Orlamonde, 1985
  • Balaabilou, 1985
  • Voyage à Rodrigues, 1986
  • Les Années Cannes, 1987
  • Le Rêve mexicain, ou, La Pensée interrompue, 1988 - Mexican Dream (tr. by Teresa Lavender Fagan)
  • Printemps et autres saisons: nouvelles, 1989
  • Sirandanes; Un Petit Lexique de la langue créole et des oiseaux, 1990
  • Onitsha, 1991 - Onitsha (tr. by Alison Anderson) - Kaupunki nimeltä Onitsha (suom. Annikki Suni)
  • Pawana, 1992
  • Étoile errante, 1992 - Wandering Star (tr. by C. Dickson) - Harhaileva tähti (suom. Annikki Suni)
  • Diego et Frida, 1993
  • La Quarantaine, 1995
  • In the Eye of the Sun: Mexican Fiestas, 1996 (with Geoff Winningham)
  • Poisson d'or, 1997
  • La fête chantée, 1997
  • Enfances, 1997 (with Christophe Kuhn)
  • Hasard suivi de Angoli Mala, 1999
  • Fantômes dans la rue, 2000
  • Coeur brûlé et autres romances, 2000
  • Révolutions, 2003
  • Mondo et autres histoires, 2005
  • Ourania, 2006
  • Raga: approche du continent invisible, 2006
  • Ballaciner, 2007
  • Ritournelle de la faim, 2008