Pablo Picasso "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" 1932, est. upon request. Image: via Bloomberg News

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By Lindsay Pollock

May 3 (Bloomberg) — There are signs of renewed confidence in the art market, to judge from the girth of the latest round of auction catalogs.
The two weeks of spring sales by Christie’s International, Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury combine for an estimated tally of as much as $1.2 billion. Sellers opting to cash out include Michael Ovitz, fashion designer Tom Ford and Seattle real-estate developer Richard Hedreen. The auction series starts tomorrow night at Christie’s, which could dominate the season because of two art-stocked estates.

The late best-selling author Michael Crichton has a collection estimated at $74.3 million, while paintings and sculptures owned by the late Los Angeles collector Frances Brody — including a knockout Picasso expected to fetch $90 million — are estimated at as much as $194 million.

Phillips de Pury, the Chelsea-based purveyor of contemporary art and design, has the dubious distinction of selling a portion of CNET Networks Inc. founder Halsey Minor’s collection. Proceeds, projected to tally as much as $29.7 million, will…

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By Lindsay Pollock

April 2 (Bloomberg) — A red, white and blue 1960-1966 Jasper Johns painting “Flag,” which once hung in Michael Crichton’s bedroom in Los Angeles, is estimated to fetch up to $15 million at Christie’s in New York on May 11.

The 98 lots from the estate of the bestselling author and filmmaker are estimated to sell for as much as $75 million.

Crichton, who wrote such jumbo thrillers as “Jurassic Park” died in 2008 at 66.

Along with works by David Hockney and Jeff Koons, the Johns picture is on view at Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters for a public exhibition that opens today. It runs April 2-3 and April 5-13 and is free.

“I can’t think of any other writer who has had this focus, and who acquired over a 40-year career with such unerring instincts,” said Brett Gorvy, Deputy Chairman of Christie’s Americas.

The flag pictures are adored by capitalist princes. Steven A. Cohen, chairman and chief executive officer of SAC Capital Advisors LP recently acquired a larger Johns flag on the private market…

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By Lindsay Pollock

March 19 (Bloomberg) — Fashion designer Tom Ford is selling a 9-foot-square, purple-hued “Self Portrait” by Andy Warhol at Sotheby’s New York in May.

The 1986 painting, featuring the artist in his signature spiky “fright wig,” is estimated to sell for $10 million to $15 million. Ford acquired the acrylic and silkscreen ink work in 1998 from the estate of the artist, according to Sotheby’s.

“It’s pretty amazing, with great color,” said Vincent Fremont, exclusive agent for sales of paintings, sculpture and drawings at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The artist is believed to have created five versions of the 9-foot canvas, the largest of any of his self-portraits, according to Sotheby’s. The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh owns versions in blue and yellow. The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth in Texas owns a green one and a U.S. private collector owns a red version, says Sotheby’s.

Warhol experimented with self-portraits since the 1950s.

“You can take the smallest version of the self-portrait and it still holds the…

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By Lindsay Pollock

March 4 (Bloomberg) — New York art dealer Bernard Goldberg, 77, reckoned the time had come for a graceful and reasonably lucrative exit from the business.

After 12 years of dealing in high-end American art, Goldberg will close his Madison Avenue gallery and sell its entire inventory of 175 artworks and furnishings at New York auctions hosted by Christie’s International this year. The sale is estimated to fetch as much as $10 million.

Goldberg says his latest move is prompted by his age, not art-market volatility.

“Right now, I feel the art market is getting better and better,” said Goldberg in an interview last week in his Fifth Avenue apartment. “This is a good time to sell.”

With the art market still shaky, Goldberg won’t be scoring the sort of coup he did in 1998, when he pulled out of the property market to cash in on high prices. He says he sold his five Manhattan boutique hotels to Credit Suisse First Boston for $139 million.

Christie’s and rival Sotheby’s, which together…

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By Lindsay Pollock and Katya Kazakina

March 4 (Bloomberg) — Wealthy and determined art collectors stormed David Kordansky’s booth yesterday afternoon during the opening hours of New York’s Armory Show.

The slender Los Angeles dealer held off a stampede of would-be buyers at the art fair, at one point calling out, politely but firmly, “Just let me get a handle on what has sold!”

The objects of desire: colorful geometric paintings by artist Will Fowler, tagged at $6,800-$7,000 a piece. Kordansky moved 13 of them in under two hours.

“I am super happy,” Kordansky said.

MoMA trustee David Teiger said he had snagged three of them.

Other relatively wallet-friendly offerings included $4,000 Polaroid photos by Philip-Lorca diCorcia at David Zwirner’s stand. The gallery sold 30 of 100 on display in the opening hours. At a higher price point, Paul Kasmin Gallery sold three paintings, priced around $85,000, by James Nares. The large canvases featured abstracted brushstrokes and hovered somewhere between painting and photography in sensibility.

The 12th annual Armory Show brings together 289 international dealers through March 7 on Manhattan’s West Side piers, hoping…

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By Lindsay Pollock

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm, MSD Capital LP, has acquired about 185,000 vintage photographic prints from the Magnum Photos agency in what is thought to be among the largest photo transactions in history.

While no price was disclosed, the collection has been insured for more than $100 million, according to a knowledgeable source who declined to be identified.

MSD Capital will lend the photos for five years to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin. Dell, chairman and chief executive officer of computer maker Dell Inc., which is based in Round Rock, Texas, is an Austin resident and University of Texas dropout.

“Having this incredible collection in Austin is especially exciting to me,” said Dell in a press statement. Forbes magazine estimated Dell’s net worth at $14.5 billion in 2009. MSD Capital manages more than $10 billion in assets, according to a press release.

Ransom is among the leading acquirers of research materials from…

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By Lindsay Pollock

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — Hendrick Goltzius’ 1612 depiction of an erotic encounter between a voluptuous sleeping damsel and a satyr, once owned by Nazi Hermann Goering, fetched $6.8 million yesterday at Sotheby’s in New York from an unidentified European collector who was bidding by phone.

The 6-foot-wide painting, “Jupiter and Antiope,” was estimated to sell for $8 million to $12 million, but drew interest from only one buyer.

Sotheby’s Old Master Painting sale otherwise sparked fairly healthy bidding, tallying $61.6 million.

“There is new money coming onto the field,” said New York dealer Richard Feigen, bidding from the front row. “The word is out that this is a good place to park money.”

Feigen was outbid on two 14th-century paintings, including Francesco di Vannuccio’s delicate gold-ground “Madonna and Child” reliquary which sold for $1 million, doubling the $500,000 presale high estimate. Feigen was bidding on behalf of a major U.S. art museum he declined to name.

The rare Goltzius had belonged to Abraham Adelsberger, a German Jewish toy manufacturer. His son-in-law…

By Lindsay Pollock

Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — New York’s Park Avenue set has begun buying art again — battered stock markets be damned! — judging from the buzz and sales Thursday at the opening night of the 56th Winter Antiques Show.

Just ask Barbara Israel. In the first half-hour of the upscale art fair, the New York-based dealer who specializes in garden statuary sold 10 pieces, including a pair of life-size doe-and-fawn groups once owned by Doris Duke for $135,000.

“The stock market wasn’t great this week, but the mood is good,” said Arie Kopelman, chairman of the show committee and vice chairman of Chanel SA. “I’ve seen a bunch of red dots and the show just opened a few minutes ago.”

Tickets to attend the first hour of the annual show, held at the Park Avenue Armory, cost $1,000 to $2,500. Publisher and collector Peter M. Brant and Sallie Krawcheck, president of Global Wealth & Investment Management at…

Link to Bloomberg News story here.

By Lindsay Pollock
Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) — A Picasso painting, worth more than $130 million by some estimates, was gouged on Friday at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art when a museumgoer fell into the artwork, leaving a six-inch gash.

The 1904-1905 painting, The Actor, depicting a graceful, gaunt male figure in a dusty pink costume on stage, was hung in a second-floor gallery among a display of early Picasso artworks.

An unidentified woman attending a museum class “lost her balance” and crashed into the artwork, according to a museum statement. The woman was not injured, said Elyse Topalian, a museum spokeswoman. The painting received a vertical tear in the lower right hand corner, the statement said.

Actor is worth about $130 million, according to a New York art dealer. The Picasso has been removed from the gallery and taken to the museum’s conservation studio for “assessment and treatment,” the statement said. Because the tear occurred in the lower portion of the canvas, the repair is expected to be “unobtrusive,” according to the museum.

The canvas…

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By Lindsay Pollock

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) — For a sedate gallery housed almost 40 years in an imposing Renaissance-style mansion on New York’s Upper East Side, Knoedler & Co. has seen a lot of activity recently.

Director and president Ann Freedman has departed, the associate director has been fired and there’s been an exodus of important gallery artists.
Meanwhile, owner Michael A. Hammer has announced that he might move Knoedler into the hip Chelsea and Meatpacking areas.

Hammer, president and chairman of 8-31 Holdings, which owns Knoedler (and the Hammer Galleries on 57th Street), has listed the seven-story building for sale with Sotheby’s International Realty Inc. for $59.5 million, making it the second most expensive private residence for sale in Manhattan, according to Streeteasy, a New York-area real-estate Web Site.

“We hope to find a more museum-quality space to accommodate larger exhibitions and pieces,” the Los Angeles- based Hammer said in the statement.

He is also chairman and chief executive officer of the Armand Hammer Foundation and grandson of industrialist Armand Hammer, who purchased Knoedler in 1971.
Knoedler has operated…