When will the reassessment come, the day of reckoning, for a time when demand not only influences art but instigates it, determines the form? Isn’t the repetitive nature of some art production in endless series just another name for creating more of the same stuff?...

In 1973 Ethel and Robert Skull, as the result of a divorce settlement, staged a significant auction of contemporary art in New York; significant in as much as it was the first time a major evening auction transpired featuring solely contemporary art. Immediately after...

I Bought Andy Warhol (Harry Abrams, 2003) is a slim new volume by California private art dealer and art market chronicler Richard Polsky, a frequent contributor to artnet.com. The premise of the book is to weave the search for the Holy Grail, i.e. the hunt for the...

UPTICK: THE THREE Why bother? Many artists toil away day after day in the solitude of their studios not with the intent of creating transcendent objects and to be immortalized by posterity as if in amber, but rather to get some good press and become another famous art...

Does your portfolio have the right balance of mutual funds, real estate investment trusts (REIT's) and art funds? It should, says Michael Moses at NYU’s Stern School of Business, who with professor Jainping Mei created the Mei/Moses Fine Art Index...

A John Curin painting appeared in an advertisement for an upcoming auction at Phillips in an art magazine. When Andrea Rosen of the eponymous gallery got wind of the consigned Curin lot, she notified the auction house of a sales agreement in effect that every client...

Imagine the worst Howard Hodgkin painting come to life in a horrible nightmare hijacking your very existence: covering walls, floors, utensils, and everything else in sight. Such is the impact of the recent exhibition of Lucas Samaras at PaceWildenstein gallery....

The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster was sad, nauseating and unfathomable. After being brought to our collective knees, New Yorkers walk around with a continual knot in our stomachs wondering what will be next. We are gripped by fear for the futures of our children,...

What in heaven's earth is Jeff Koons thinking with regard to his new series of paintings aside from money? They are without doubt the most awful crop of crap to emerge from the studio of a leading light of contemporary art since...there is no comparison to be made, as...

As evidence that there can be no strictly linear movement up in the art market without regard to quality and consistency, there has been a marked downturn and backing off with regard to Damien Hirst's auction performance in 2001. Though his last extravaganza at New...

From 1986 to the summer of 1999 Borocco Restaurant (below Canal on West Broadway) was a favorite art world hang out in the heyday of the Mary Boone-Schnabel-Fischl-Salle-Basquiat, rein of power. A time forever, memorably etched upon the minds of those that caught a...

Phillips was tepid at best and at worst, a dangerous place to go to market with your contemporary art wares. The conclusion was don't sell at Phillips work that could be accepted for consignment at either Sotheby's or Christie's (in contrast to some big-ticket items...