Damien Hirst's 1993 "We've Got Style (The Vessel Collection - Blue/Green)" est. $800,000 - $1.2 M on view at Sotheby's. © Photo: Lindsay Pollock

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

A ramble around Sotheby’s sixth floor exhibition space on a sleepy August afternoon showed no signs of the cataclysmic economic upheaval which forced works by John Currin, Julie Mehretu and Yoshitomo Nara — all formerly part of the Neuberger Berman collection — onto the auction block.

The once prosperous investment bank Lehman Brothers acquired money management company Neuberger Berman in 2003. Bonus: a stellar art collection worth more than $10 million. The collection has been on view at Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters over the summer.

The Sept. 25 auction includes 147 contemporary artworks, with sale proceeds going to Lehman creditors.

Highlights include John Baldessari’s Stares (with Lamps),  a black and white collage of austere headshots and white silhouettes framed by floor lamps illuminated in blue and yellow. Tagged $350,000 – $450,000, the piece was acquired at Sotheby’s in 1991 for $29,700 (nice return!)  With the opening of the Baldessari retrospective this month in Los Angeles and in October at the Met, the piece is money in the bank.

A middle-aged woman with a sassy stance and deadpan expression stars in…

Top of Art Deco Lexington Avenue building where Sotheby's Institute of Art offers classes.

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views Contributor

For just $600, aspiring art funders, flippers and investors can learn the ropes at Sotheby’s Institute this fall.

Art & Finance: Where Two Worlds Meet, a Six Week Course to Demystify Fine Art as an Investment, takes place Tuesday evenings from 6:30-8:00pm, Nov. 2-Dec. 7 at Sotheby’s Institute of Art in Midtown. Tuition for the six classes is $600.

While investing in art is in vogue, understanding the relationship between fine art and finance isn’t easy. Students will examine how the fine art market compares to the financial market, and ultimately gain an understanding of how art is an asset that can be measured in a portfolio similar to a stock or bond.

The course is taught by Noah Kupferman, who hones his finance chops as a VP and Private Client Manager at US Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. He began his career at Sotheby’s as a Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy specialist. Kupferman has taught courses evaluating fine art and finance at New York University, Columbia Business School and the Sotheby’s Institute.

Disclaimer:  I am…

Photo: via Sotheby's

The latest installment of Sotheby’s campaign, “Your Life is Global. Sothebys.com is mobile,” promotes their newfangled mobile absentee bidding technology with an ad featuring a man tapping on his laptop, amid the evening glow of a luxurious thatched hut in the remote wilds of somewhere.

There is what appears to be a painting of a cheetah hanging on the wall,  suggesting our collector may have a yen for wildlife art. Thank heavens he has wireless in the African plains or where ever he may be so he may transmit an absentee bid.

“Can’t make the sale?” asks the ad. “Not to worry.”

Screen shot from Sotheby's Russian promotional video. Jo Vickery in center.

Sotheby’s is introducing new sale, Important Russian Art, slated for Thursday Nov. 4 in New York. The auction is timed to coincide with the high-profile week of Impressionist and Modern art auctions. The house currently holds a Russian sale in New York in April and sales in London in June and November.

Sotheby’s has been aggressively chasing Russian business. They have held specialized Russian sales since 2000 when sales tallied $6 million. In 2008, sales peaked at $242 million. The house has sold $50 million so far in 2010.

Here’s a video (with handy Russian subtitles) featuring Sotheby’s senior vice president Sonya Bekkerman and senior director Jo Vickery discussing the recent sales and the market. Click here to watch.

Sotheby’s new campaign for their mobile application (“Your life is Global. Sothebys.com is mobile)” touts the fact that collectors may peruse upcoming lots on their hand-held devices, liberating them from the tyranny of the desktop computer.

My personal favorite features a gray haired man, at the helm of what looks like a pricey yacht, an iPhone tucked into his right hand. A white-jeaned babe reclines beside him. She doesn’t get to drive the boat nor surf the web. While a number of states have banned texting and car driving, I’m not sure where boats fit into all of this.

J. M. W. Turner's "Modern Rome-Campo Vaccino" sold for $44.9M at Sotheby's in London to Getty Museum. Photo: Sotheby's

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views contributor

Los Angeles’ J. Paul Getty Museum has purchased J.M.W. Turner’s four-foot wide view of Rome for $44.9 million, a record for the artist at auction. The price was more than double the low estimate.

Turner’s 1839 painting, Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino, sold for £29.7 ($44.9 million) today at Sotheby’s in London. The estimate was  £12 – 18 million ($18.2 – $27.4 million).  London dealer Hazlitt Gooden & Fox bid on behalf of the Getty.

Sotheby’s evening old master and British painting sale totaled $80.9 million.

Only four other Turner oil paintings of comparable stature remain in private hands, according to Sotheby’s. The work is in its original plaster gilt and glazed frame and is the culmination of Turner’s focus on Rome. Modern Rome originally belonged to Turner’s  friend and patron, Hugh Monro of Novar. The work was acquired in 1878 by the 5th Earl of Rosebery and his wife, Hannah Rothschild on their honeymoon and has remained in the same family ever since.

The piece depicts the Italian landscape from the Capitoline Hill.…

Eric Fischl's "Study for Corrida in Ronda #4" 2008, sold for $145,000. Photo: America: Now and Here

By Mackie Healy, Art Market Views contributor

Painter Eric Fischl’s peripatetic U.S. art tour got a $1.2 million boost last week. The June 23 charity sale at Sotheby’s in New York raised funds for Fischl’s ambitious not-for-profit project, America: Now and Here,  a cross-country tour of art, poetry, film, plays and music to promote creativity and innovation across America. The auction was the project’s official launch.

The auction included works of art by well-known artists, as well as “luxury experiences,” including a Soho dinner for five with Chuck Close, a private tennis lesson with John McEnroe and a one-week stay at a Jamaican villa. Eric Fischl’s Study for Corrida in Ronda #4 was the top lot at the live auction conducted by Sotheby’s chairman and marquee charity auctioneer, Jamie Niven. The work fetched $145,000.

America: Now and Here is a nationwide tour which will stop in eight regions a year. The itinerant exhibition will be open to the public for six weeks in each location. Events will be held in custom-designed mobile truck galleries, civic centers and local schools, and include public programs, performances,…

Sotheby's Tobias Meyer conducting Sotheby's London auction, with Yves Klein's 1961 "Re 49" on the wall. Photo: Sotheby's

Sotheby’s contemporary evening sale in London tonight totaled $61.8 million, about a third as much as last May’s New York contemporary sale. Results are respectable: eighty-three percent of lots found buyers. Nine of 53 lots failed to sell. The same London sale tallied just $42 million a year ago.

The evening’s top lot was Klein’s Re 49, Relief Eponge Blue, the surface arrayed with sponges, pebbles and coated in the artist’s signature blue hue.  The 1961 piece sold for $9.3 million to an unnamed U.S. collector, according to Sotheby’s.  The seller was HypoVereinsbank.

Other Kleins on the block included a gold leaf panel MG42 which sold for $732,848, six times the price it fetched in at auction 2000. Another piece, a fire painting titled F124 sold for $1.4 million. The artist’s retrospective continues at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum until Sept. 12.

Sotheby’s press department calculated any and all auction records, including one for a Boetti tapestry: Mappa fetched $1.3 million. Bharti Kher’s life-size elephant sculpture The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own, set an auction record for the artist, selling for $1.5 million–also a…

Ansel Adams "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park" sold for $722,500 to Alinder Gallery

The Alinder Gallery, based in Gualala, California, purchased Ansel Adams’ Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, the top lot at Sotheby’s June 21 and 22 sale of the Polaroid Collection. The work sold for $722,500, above $500,000 high estimate. Overall the sale totaled $12.5 million with 88.8 percent of lots finding buyers. My earlier coverage of the sale is here.

The gallery, which specializes in Ansel Adams has a motto displayed on the landing page of its website:  “Better Art. Better Life.”

Adams took the photo of the misty mountainous landscape in 1938. The mural-sized print from the Polaroid Collection dates from the 1950s or 1960s and was printed four-feet wide and hung in a Polaroid office.

New York collector Adam Lindemann featured on cover of May-June 2010 issue of "Sotheby's At Auction"

On a recent visit to Sotheby’s I nabbed a copy of  Sotheby’s At Auction, essentially a glossy advertorial for upcoming auction property with a few articles sprinkled in the mix.

The cover features collector Adam Lindemann, photographed at home in New York, surrounded by contemporary and tribal art. Also prominently displayed is Lindemann’s green and purple faced watch, which I am guessing is probably a Marc Newson designed Ikepod–a brand Lindemann got involved with in 2005.

The cover story focuses on tribal collectors Lindemann as well as South African artist and collector Karel Nel and German collector Peter Henle.