Record $28.6 Million Price for a Sculpture

[Merlion]

This is a record auction sale for any sculpture, antique or modern. For pictures see bottom of post. It is a beautiful high quality piece of work.

Bronze Artemis Sells for $28.6 Million, Sets Records (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aTvcI1fCndqk&refer=home)

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- An important, 2,000-year-old Roman bronze of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, brought $28.6 million this afternoon at Sotheby's in New York, becoming both the most expensive antiquity and piece of sculpture from any period to sell at auction.

London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi won the bidding for an unnamed European collector.

``You're not likely to find anything of this quality outside the Louvre,'' Eskenazi said, soon after the gavel went down.

The heroic yet graceful 36-inch figure, clad in gladiator sandals and a billowing dress, quadrupled its $7 million presale high estimate.

The Artemis price edged the previous sculpture record of $27.5 million paid in May 2005 for Brancusi's ``Bird in Space'' at Christie's in New York. It more than doubled the previous antiquities record, held by a Roman marble statue of Venus that sold for $11.6 million at Christie's in London in 2002.

The huntress -- with a small stag at her side -- is among the most significant of 207 artworks and objects sold by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York and offered at Sotheby's this spring. .....

These two pictures below are from different sources.

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/000Images/aim/artemis6921.jpg http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/visuals/polytheism/artemis-stag.jpg

[Ries]

Well, it may be old, but its kinda clunky.
Me, I would take the platinum skull with the diamonds anyday.

[JasonGillespie]

Well, it may be old, but its kinda clunky.
Me, I would take the platinum skull with the diamonds anyday.

Clunky?
Forget that it is a piece of history never to be repeated. (though history may not move you) Forget that it is a work of great craftmanship and not a small amount of elegance.(perhaps not your idea of elegance) Forget that it is what sculpture is at its core....form balanced with content. (perhaps not your idea of form or content)
Forgetting all that....what is it that makes Hirst's factory produced skull in anyway comparable to an obvious artistic labor like the Artemis? I'm being quite sincere.

For the record......I would like to have it long enough to sell it so I could buy some real art, but that would be the extent of my desire for Hirst's skull.


If anything is ungainly it is the piece below

[StevenW]

Replace the platinum with aluminum and the diamonds with glass and you have eighteen dollars and thirty two cents worth of skull "art", tax included.

Take eighteen denarii (ancient Roman currency) worth of Bronze and add meticulous care, vision and 2000 years and you have 28 million dollars of Artemis.

Sounds about right to me.

[GlennT]

I'm hoping that Ries is just being funny here for the sake of a reaction. But Ries, if you actually are serious, and if we were to forget the assigned dollar values and just look at an artistic comparison, can you explain your perspective?

[Ries]

Actually, I am 100% serious.
I can appreciate the historical importance of the Artemis sculpture.
But as an object, it leaves me completely cold.
There are certainly many historical objects that I love as objects- but this is not one of them.
It is a certain style of depiction, which was popular at certain times in history, but strikes me as somewhat affected.
The pose is wooden, the subject matter does not resonate with me or my life, and frankly, I would get no great joy from looking at it if it was in my living room.

As for the Hirst piece- what makes you think it is "factory produced"?
Since it is not life size, it is clearly not a cast from an actual skull, but was in fact modelled, and cast, pretty much the way any other sculpture would be.

Perhaps you are referring to the fact that Hirst himself did not model, cast, or chase the piece?
This is an entirely different arguement, if so. One that I myself have conflicted views on.
As a craft based artist myself, I find that my personal interaction with the materials not only makes me happy, but I believe, rightly or wrongly, that my actual making of the work enables me to make a series of hundreds of small decisions along the way that improve the final piece.

However, the tradition of an artist working with assistants, modelers, foundrymen, chasers and patina experts goes back at least as far as this Artemis piece, and we have absolutely no way of knowing how involved the actual "artist" was in this piece. Rome was a very sophisticated, class divided society, and I would not doubt at all if the actual, "name" artist employed a lot of skilled help to get this piece made.

The cash values affect my opinions of neither piece. I do not think that the rarity of the antique is much different, in purely market terms, from the rarity of Hirst pieces. In both cases, the market values are completly disconnected from the actual material prices, or even the direct cost of labor to make the piece.

So its totally meaningless to say that if the Hirst skull was made of aluminum and glass, it would be worth eighteen bucks.
You could similarly say that if the Artemis piece was production cast plaster, you would have $25 worth of "roman art".

I have, of course, not seen the Hirst skull in person. But if I did, I am quite confident that the intrinsic nature of platinum and diamonds would have an affect. Both physical and mental.
So the materials it is made of are intrinsic to the meaning and feel of the piece, just as the fact that this Artemis sculpture is bronze means it has a certain heft, feel and reality to it that it would not have if it was made from cheaper materials.

I have seen several Hirst pieces in real life, and have been impressed with all of them. He is not a complete charlatan. He has a feel for materials, he makes sure the work with his name on it, whoever actually crafts it, has exactly the feel and look he wants.
He may not be the kind of hands on, clay up to his elbows type of artist that you guys like- but he is quite skilled at communicating exactly the ideas he wants to communicate, and the finished pieces are elegantly crafted, impeccably balanced and composed, and do say something about our current society.

Nobody says you have to like them.
That is in the realm of taste, and we all have our right to our own taste.

I am, however, completely serious when I say that if I had a choice, and money was completly removed from the equation, I would not be interested in having this Artemis sculpture in my home.
And I would indeed enjoy owning the Hirst skull, and would appreciate living with it.

I have, over the years, purchased, traded, and been given, the work of a lot of artists, in many media, in many styles. My house is filled with art, a few pieces of mine and my wife's, but mostly other peoples work. I really enjoy living with art, and I know what I like.
I am not predjuiced against representational art, and I have a fair bit of it in my home as well.

I just dont like this piece.


(on further research, it does appear that Hirst may have used an actual skull to cast his piece from, which may change what I said a bit- but I still say that the process to make it is by and large the same as making any other cast metal piece, and, frankly, makes little difference to me in my appraisal of the finished piece)

[GlennT]

Thanks Ries. We obviously inhabit two different worlds in terms of our perception of art. However, I appreciate the good, honest, and thoughtful reply.

[Ries]

And thank God we do-
I cannot imagine how flat and boring the world would be if we all shared one perception about art, or anything else for that matter.

I do not share the same perceptions about art as Damien Hirst- it would never occur to me to make the work he does, in the way he does it.

In fact what constantly thrills and excites me about art in general is the very fact that it is all made by artists who think about the world in different ways than I do.
Ways I would never in my wildest dreams thought of on my own.

[evaldart]

I have to agree with Ries on this one. There are many, many figurative pieces of antiquity stone and bronze that I would like better than the skull...but not this one. Too bland, even where it gets busy in the drapery it kind of disappoints me.

If I had 28 million I'd buy the Laocoon and call it a day. Done collecting sculpture...just sit and stare at THAT for the rest of my life.

How many of those Easter Island heads could I get for that kind of cash?

[Ries]

One thing that is barely mentioned in the link, in its breathless talk about ALL THAT MONEY, is that this piece is being deaccesioned by the Albright Knox museum in Buffalo.
They have decided that to continue to be a museum of contemporary art, it is essential for them to keep buying new work.
And so they have decided to sell a variety of artworks they have had donated to them over the years that dont fit in their core collection and direction.

I have never been to Buffalo, but I have been told by those who have that the A-K has a very impressive collection of more modern pieces than this- and with substantially less support, budget, and endowment than flashier and more famous museums in other cities.

I think this is an interesting, and somewhat controversial part of the whole deal.
Should museums sell work at all?

Should they focus on their strengths, and edit, sell, and buy accordingly, or do they all have a responsibility to show a bit of everything?

If there was an entire museum dedicated to ancient roman art (and there are, in Italy, and I have visited some of them) would it be appropriate for them to auction off a valuable work of art that didnt fit in their curatorial focus? What if somebody donated a Neon and Steel Mario Merz sculpture to a museum of roman antiquities?

I know that many in Buffalo are sad to see this, and some of the other works in this auction, go.

It is certainly not a cut and dried case, there are arguments to be made on both sides.

[JasonGillespie]

The skull in question was an 18th century male of aprox 35 years of age. Hirst had the skull molded then cast in platinum. The Bond Street jewellers Bentley & Skinner helped him assemble it. It is based in part on similar jewelled skulls made by the Mayans. Not a terribly creative or original effort on Hirst's part....given some of his other "sculpture".

Granted the divergent opinions about art create the "spice" in the world of art. That doesn't mitigate the fact that some people get away with a lot under the guise of art...but I realize we aren't supposed to have any criteria for what art is. All I know is Hirst uses this logic to laugh all the way to the bank...again. I truly feel sorry for the sap who ponys up the asking price.

From what I understand Steve Cohen, the gentleman who bought the shark for 7 million, had to replace it with another because the original decayed too much. At least whoever buys the skull won't have to worry about that.

[Cantab]

Although I wouldn’t go against Jason (Post 3) on this, my first reaction to the pic of the bronze was that it was, as Ries said, a little bit ‘clunky’. Odd that we should have the same response. Well, the same response if Ries meant the following:
The face and the torso look good, but the lower body is leaden. The upper body and the lower seem like different sculptures, the upper being a bust, inappropriately attached to a moving figure. Rather heavy top half too. The forward leg is poorly formed, and the deer is very poorly formed (compared to the Blondel). The raised arm is also unconvincing, well, clunky really. Hard to tell from the angle, but the Blondel seems to embody a better, coherent ACTION. (There’s something just slightly posed/stilted about this bronze that the great classical figures avoid). But Jason’s a better analyst than me, so I’ll shut up now.

[Cantab]

However, the tradition of an artist working with assistants, modelers, foundrymen, chasers and patina experts goes back at least as far as this Artemis piece, and we have absolutely no way of knowing how involved the actual "artist" was in this piece. Rome was a very sophisticated, class divided society, and I would not doubt at all if the actual, "name" artist employed a lot of skilled help to get this piece made

This is very true. Question: to what extent have modern artists simply given up on the skills, and now essentially contract out the work (as opposed to, say, Henry Moore, who HAD all the skills, and a bunch of apprentices and assistants too, and a foundry, and a studio working for him in Pietrasanta). There was nothing that Moore's assistants did that he could not do, and like many of the great artists, there was nothing that came to have his name that he didn't actually work on. I suspect that this has changed.

[Ries]

Jason nobody ever said "we arent supposed to have any criteria".
What I have said, and believe, is that we dont all have the SAME criteria.
Just as we dont all want to marry the same woman (or man) we dont all want to order the same thing for dinner, and we dont all wear the same shoes.

Taste is not an absolute.


As far as Henry Moore being able to do every portion of a sculpture- well, if he could, he was unusual, even in his day and age.

Rodin sent his foundry work out- does that make him less of an artist?

Now personally, as I said, I do all my own work, own all my own equipment, and can, I like to flatter myself, do everything in my shop better than my employees. But mainly because I enjoy doing welding, forging, machining, and sheet metal work. I love owning tools, and using them.

However, as Ken Kesey used to say, sometimes you need to look at the donut, and not the hole.

I know some very fine artists, who do excellent work, who job parts of it out. And it is successful because they have taken the time to learn where the decision points are- what things will change the work, for better or worse, and how to specify the result they want. If an artist takes the time to work with employees or subcontractors, understand the process, and the final piece is exactly what they wanted, then I dont see the problem of using other people or businesses, the way you would use any other tool.

Certainly a conductor does not play every instrument, and yet the sound of the orchestra is a result of their will, intent, and experience.

On the other hand, I know, and disdain, a lot of artists who come up with sketchy ideas, often in Photoshop on their computers, and send them out to be built, by subcontractors who neither know nor care about aesthetics, and end up with shoddy, illconsidered work- but its not because of the technique, so much as the artists inability to use the tool they have selected.

As for feeling sorry for people who paid $7 Million for a Damien Hirst- well, it was a concious decision made by a responsible adult.
I would say you could equally feel sorry for people who paid $82.5 Million for a Van Gogh.
A decent painter, certainly, with an interesting life- but Eighty Million dollars?

Again, there is no accounting for taste.

If we had ONE unifying set of artistic criteria by which all human artistic output was judged, a lot of wonderful work would no doubt be judged inacceptable.
I really dont think you can come up with a set of standards like that, no matter how hard you tried, that would include the vast range of objects of intrinsic interest that humans have made over the last 20,000 years.

In the end, I think it really comes down to what YOU like, versus what I like.

And if enough people like Damien Hirsts work, as they seem to, he will continue to make work.

[Cantab]

As far as Henry Moore being able to do every portion of a sculpture- well, if he could, he was unusual, even in his day and age. Rodin sent his foundry work out- does that make him less of an artist?



I suspect that this is incorrect, Ries. The traditional use of other workshops and foundries has been to contract out what the artist does not need to do. A Rodin bronze is based on an actual Rodin – the making of the bronze isn’t an artistic activity (although the artist would do well to know the process in order to manipulate its possibilities). Other workshops could be contracted in to help out, to make copies of work or to work up the stone to the point where the artist takes over. As far as assistants go, the traditional workshop was a commercial venture, and the training of assistants was a part of that. Having these trained assistants (trained by the master craftsman, the artist) do some work and eventually become part of a master team only emphasises the central skills of the master himself. The history of art is littered with instances of apprentices/assistants whose development threatened the supremacy of their master, and who then set up their own studios, or just had to go. I have a friend here in Cambridge, she's in her forties, who worked as an assistant to Antony Caro in the 1970s, in his studio - she got the training and supported his work in the process. She's now an independent artist/craftsperson. We are in a different era now, and the IDEA of the artist has overwhelmed the idea of the master craftsman. Perhaps with the result that there are many artists today who are simply not master craftsmen. Moore belonged to that older tradition of craftsmen/artists, something that developed with the Renaissance. The Artist had to be a complete craftsman too, and this was the tradition that ALL artists between the early 1500s and the beginning of the 20th century belonged to. Artistic identities were also thoroughly wrapped up in what the artist him/herself actually DID with the material used. The artwork could not be separated from the execution of it. Once the ‘artist’ no longer sees the need to be a craftsman, then all that work can be contracted out, the contractors become the master craftsmen, and the artist the man of ideas – Hirst.

[Merlion]

I agree it is only an ideal that an artist has to personally work on all tasks in the creation of a sculpture. There are many situations where this is not possible, e.g. big bronze sculptures. We would not respect an artist less if such tasks are performed by others.

On the other hand, it is still a feasible ideal that the artist have knowledge and experience of these other tasks that are 'outsourced' to others. I would give more respect to such artists if they have these.

But I would give little respect to a person who just supply the idea for a sculpture, however good, with little knowledge and experience of the materials and techniques involved, and just pay others to implement the idea. I may not even consider this person an artist.

[evaldart]

A million subtle opportunities are lost or never recognized when the work falls into the hands of the person or persons whose only job is to execute a craft. Sometimes changes and decisions made on-the-run put the charges to a dying sculpture - bring it back, make it something different and better than you ever thought. I dont care if you're a hundred - your ideas need to refelect your abilities or the work will never be as good as it could have been, all that money only getting you the most obvious version of your idea, which is never the BEST version.

[fritchie]

Cantab, #15: "A Rodin bronze is based on an actual Rodin – the making of the bronze isn’t an artistic activity (although the artist would do well to know the process in order to manipulate its possibilities). Other workshops could be contracted in to help out, to make copies of work or to work up the stone to the point where the artist takes over."

Evaldart, #17: "A million subtle opportunities are lost or never recognized when the work falls into the hands of the person or persons whose only job is to execute a craft. Sometimes changes and decisions made on-the-run put the charges to a dying sculpture - bring it back, make it something different and better than you ever thought."


Of course, it's only my opinion, but I decided when I first saw the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia somewhere about 1975, that his marbles weren't nearly as strong as his bronzes, as a group in each case. In fact, very quickly I ignored the marbles and focussed solely on the bronzes, which I considered generally breathtaking. This was my first experience with more than one or two of his works at a time.

The bronzes could be made directly from his clays, by expert assistants at foundries through the intermediacy of molds, but the marbles had to be created one at a time by marblecarvers, repeatedly measuring the clays or more likely plaster casts. No amount of accurate measurement and then transference of those measurements to a stone being cut could have the immediacy of a direct cast in metal. My knowledge of technique essentially was none at that date, but my eye could see a significant difference in what I interpret as quality. I think Ries' post insightfully adds to Cantab's statement of the general issues.

[Ries]

Well, I have done some relatively large sculptures, and I have trained some assistants over the last 20 years or so, and I know that both take a lot of time- and when you are doing really large work, and lots of it, it just isnt humanly possible to do it all.

Certainly some artists have been more masters of their craft than others, over the years. But I think if you dug hard enough, you could find examples of great artists, going back at least 500 years or so, who delegated parts of their work to more skilled craftsmen that they did not train themselves.

Did Bernini really teach every carver, painting assistant, and metalworker that worked on the large amount of work he did? I am guessing that even as far back as the renaissance, there were many cases of journeymen moving from studio to studio, especially for more prolific artists who employed 20 or more assistants.

As I said, I personally agree that there are many decisions in the process of making work that are best made by the artist. And the more technical and craft skills the artist has, the better the final work becomes.

But I do think the essential way Hirst works, which is to use assistants, subcontractors, and skilled craftsmen AS HIS TOOLS, has been done by artists for at least 500 years, and that in some cases, certainly not all, good, if not great, art has been produced this way.

Not every artist can, or would want to, work this way. But some can, and some, indeed, must, because the scale of what they want to do is just impossible any other way.

Gutzon Borghlum, for instance, could carve stone himself. But he quit doing much of it early in his career, and instead spent most of his time managing, administering, and raising money. I am sure an arguement could be made that Mount Rushmore would have been better if ol' Gutzon carved every bit of it himself- but he didnt, and in fact, although he lived on site, he was gone for long periods of time, and many other people, some more skilled at certain things, did a lot of the actual sculpting.

Many of the classic, monumental works in Europe, dating back hundreds of years, were built in a similar fashion, where the main artist provided vision and direction, but was not skilled in every facet of the work.

Gaudi, for example, created amazing masterpieces by working with glass, ceramic, stone, wood and metal craftsmen, many of whom had much more skill and knowledge than he. And yet, without his vision, drawings, and constant refinements, none of them could have produced anything remotely like his finished works.

So I think there is an arguement to be made that great art can be created by an artist who is basically an idea man, as opposed to the hands on guy.
I am not necessarily placing Hirst in this category- I am just saying it is possible, and has been done, again and again over the years.

Its not as heroic or romantic as the single sculptor working alone, and creating great works of genius all with his own hands- but, in reality, its a lot more common on huge projects throughout history than you would think.

[Cantab]

Fritchie I agree, I prefer the bronzes. Rodin's feeling for working the material comes across better when he works clay, and that is transferred to bronze. I didn't know that his marbles were originally clay, then transferred to marble by marble carvers. I'm astonished! I have never heard of anyone ever using marble in this way (as a medium for replicating what was actually expressed fully in another). I must look again at the marbles....

Ries - I'm sure there is a lot to what you say here (post 19). I must also do some reading up on studio practices over the years - an interesting issue. I'm not inclined to agree about Mount Rushmore, though - that's carving, not sculpture, and can be carried out by a range of contracted stone masons and no-one would know the difference between one guy's work and another. Re. Hirst - I must be careful with this guy: what do we really know about his skills?

Evaldart - excellent post (No.19) - how many times does an artist rescue a bad idea in the making, or create someting better than planned in the process of execution?

[Merlion]

Although the record has recently been broken, this sculpture "Artemis and the Stag" set a record auction price for a sculpture and an antiquity a few months ago. See post #1 above.

News has come in that it is now on public view at NYC, at the Met. Museum of Art. See link below.

'Artemis and the Stag' sculpture on display in NYC (http://www.buffalonews.com/258/story/245700.html)

Jan 7, 2008. "Artemis and the Stag," the famous 2,000-year-old bronze sculpture sold in a controversial auction last year by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery is now on view in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Albright-Knox director Louis Grachos confirmed that the sculpture is on loan to the museum from an unnamed private collector, ...

The sculpture, a late Hellenistic/early Roman bronze hailed as one of the most important statues ever sold at auction, went on view last week in the museum's new gallery for antiquities. It now stands among an impressive collection of Greek and Roman sculptures that ranks as one of the finest in the world. ...

A picture of the sculpture can be seen in this link. The picture does not quite agree with the pictures I posted in thread #1 above. I'm not sure which one is the right one.

[Andrew Werby]

The last picture seems to be the correct one; there's a better version of it here: http://artvoice.com/issues/v5n47/going_going . While the figure is more appealing than the rather cold-looking one posted at the beginning of the thread, that might be more in keeping with the reported nature of the goddess Artemis. (Either that, or it lost something in translation from Greek to Roman). That latter one is in the Louvre, by the way, and apparently isn't being "deaccessioned". (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis)

The thing that strikes me about the Buffalo piece is the scale disparity between the human and animal figures. The one shown is hardly a stag; it's small for a faun, if Artemis is supposed to be human-sized. While the stag in the French piece is undersized, in the Buffalo version it's tiny, and has no antlers either. I wonder if the title was applied because the two pieces were found together, or sold by the same dealer? Is the base an integral part of the casting, or were the figures attached later? One wonders...

As for the controversy over the deaccessioning, I'm of two minds. On the one hand, that 28.6 million bucks could make a big difference to impoverished local artists, even if the museum dealt it out a little at a time. But it seems like the museum is probably going to blow it on a few overpriced paintings by "name" artists of the Abstract Expressionist period, in which case (in my humble opinion) they should have held onto the old bronze.

Andrew Werby
www.unitedartworks.com

[cooljamesx1]

everything is about degrees and gray areas and fuzzy lines and margins of error.

[Merlion]

There seems to be no real authentication at auction houses. Forgeries will be common when people are willing to part with $28.6 m based just on 'trust'.

'Ancient' Forgeries Fool Art Markets (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,529532,00.html)

Jan 23, 2008. SPIEGEL. Archeologists and art experts are concerned about a wave of forgeries that have appeared on the art market. The fakes are meeting the growing demand for collectable art from the global jet set, but even the musuems are being fooled.

The packed auction room at Sotheby's in New York was filled with feverish anticipation when, on June 7, 2007, assistants ... rolled a delicate bronze statue ... into the room. According to the auction catalog, the bronze sculpture, titled "Artemis and the Stag," was a depiction of the Roman goddess of the hunt.

... A spokesman for the auction house raved about the sculpture, calling it "among the most beautiful works of art surviving from antiquity." The masterpiece promptly set off a vigorous bidding war.

... The auctioneer's hammer finally came down with a bang at $25.5 million ($28.6 million, including the Sotheby's fee). ...

It was the highest price every paid for a Roman sculpture. Even Sotheby's called the sale "absolutely astonishing. '

But the new owner, rumored to be a Russian, could soon be disappointed. In a report SPIEGEL has obtained, Stefan Lehmann, an archeologist from the eastern German city of Halle, raises doubts about the piece. He is troubled by the "unexpressive face and seemingly perfect condition" of the sculpture. At first glance, writes Lehmann, the sculpture reminds him of a "classical work from the period around 1800."

Josef Floren, the German author of a handbook titled "The Greek Sculpture," is also skeptical. The "box-shaped base" on which the goddess is standing seems "modern." Floren is also perplexed by the clothing the young woman is wearing. "Something resembling a shawl or a veil is draped across her shoulders. No one in Rome walked around like that."

Could comments like these spell the beginning of a major scandal in the art world? ...