The George Lindemann Journal By George Lindemann

George Lindemann Journal

You Loved Me Like a Distant Star (2012)
Ms. Emin's neons are all hand-blown by London-based sign-maker Kerry Ryan, who then fills the glass with a mixture of neon, argon and mercury using a century-old technique. Lehmann Maupin

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The Scream (2002)
Many of the show's works, including "The Scream" from 2002, reflect Ms. Emin's struggle with feelings of depression. Ms. Emin believes her soul was "tangled up" in that of her twin brother, Paul. Tracey Emin/White Cube

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The Tracey Emin Museum (1995)
Kerry Ryan made Ms. Emin's first neon, shown here, for her studio in 1995. The two are now close friends, but upon meeting the "boisterous" artist, Mr. Ryan says he initially thought she was "a bit off her rocker." Tracey Emin/White Cube

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I Can Feel your Smile (2005)
The seemingly random capitalized letters in Tracey Emin's signs are cosmetic touches. Some letters such as "i" or "s" look better capitalized than others, she explains. Lehmann Maupin

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Meet Me in Heaven I Will Wait for You (2004)
Ms. Emin became famous for brassy, sexually explicit work, which are themes in some of her neons in the show. But the vast majority of her works deal with topics like love, God and depression. Lehmann Maupin/Whitecube

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Only God Knows I'm Good (2009)
The green used in this sign is similar to that used in the neon signs of apothecaries in Europe, because it also glows during the day, says Ms. Emin. Lehmann Maupin/Whitecube

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You Forgot to Kiss My Soul (2001)
Ms. Emin has never held a show of neons before, partly because the process of putting it together is so expensive that most museums would require that the show then travel to recoup costs, says Ms. Emin, who refuses to do traveling shows. Lehmann Maupin/Whitecube

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Sorry Flowers Die (1999)
MOCA Miami was the first American museum to purchase one of Ms. Emin's works, a film called "Why I Never Became a Dancer," whichi will be screened at the exhibition. Lehmann Maupin/Whitecube

George Lindemann Journal

The Museum of Modern Art’s atrium has been home to any number of weird, wild and wacky goings-on. There was the time the performance artist Marina Abramovic sat there for 700 hours, and another when someone played a baby-grand piano from inside a hole that had been cut into it. There was also an installation of hazelnut pollen, and even a giant garage sale.

For its next act, the Modern will install nine double-sided screens, measuring up to 23 feet wide and hung at different heights, that will project a work by the British artist Isaac Julien, “Ten Thousand Waves”; it will be on view starting Monday. The installation deals with the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004, when 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned off the coast of northwest England. It incorporates archival footage from a police helicopter showing the rescue of one survivor from a sandbank. There are also audio recordings of distress calls and images of contemporary Chinese culture. (Through Feb. 17; moma.org.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/arts/design/remembering-a-tragedy.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Farts%2Fdesign%2Findex.jsonp&_r=0

George Lindemann Journal

Work by Michelle Lopez will be among the sculptures appearing in the 2013 Art Basel Miami Beach Art Public sector.

Man is by nature a social animal…Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.

— Aristotle, Politics

Those of us who fall into the middling range of mere mortals may especially enjoy this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach Art Public sector, with works chosen especially to reflect the exhibition’s theme of “Social Animals.”

Nicholas Baume, director and chief curator of New York’s Public Art Fund, selected two dozen works that play on the collective and social nature of a public park. The artists invited to show at Collins Park this year range from emerging to emeritus. There’s even a posthumous display by Charlotte Posenenske, a German artist known for her minimalist works — particularly her steel sculptures resembling ventilation parts. Gallerists Mehdi Chouakri and Peter Freeman are teaming up to recreate six works from her Vierkanthrohre (Square Tubes) Serie D, among the last works she created before abruptly ending her career in the late 1960s. Ironically, during her self-imposed exile from the art world until her death in 1985, Posenenske questioned the worth of public art.

For Silvia Karman Cubiñá, that worth is not questionable at all. As executive director and chief curator of the Bass Museum – which once again joined Art Basel in Miami Beach to produce the outdoor exhibit outside the museum’s front entrance – Cubiñá has seen first-hand how the public interacts with the art previously displayed in Collins Park. Of particular note were six chaise-shaped concrete slabs created by Mexican artist Teresa Margolles, Cubiñá says, explaining how different groups of people would gravitate to the works.

“They turned into a meeting point, which became lovely, because there would be different populations that would crowd around it,” she says. “Early in the morning we had a lot of homeless people that were having breakfast. Then a little later, the dog walkers. Then at 3 o’clock the students who came from the high school would gather there, and some of them started coming into the museum. Then again the dog walkers; then again the homeless people. So, there were different populations, and I just saw it as a gathering place that came together around art.”

This year British sculptor Thomas Houseago is expected to provide visitors with a similar experience. In addition to his Striding Figure (Rome 1), Houseago plans to provide two studio seats and a chaise lounge, which will be an open invitation for the public to drape themselves across his sculptures. Danish artist Jeppe Hein also is expected to add a bit of interactive art with his Appearing Rooms, a constantly changing sculpture in which jets of water form a labyrinth of wet walls that can end up soaking those who get too close. Matias Faldbakken presents a full-scale adaptation of a Peterbilt 281 big rig truck.

This year’s exhibit in the park, which fronts the museum and spans the area between 17th and 25th streets, is aimed to satisfy the senses from sight to sound and runs through March 31. According to Cubiñá, a grant from the Knight Foundation enabled the show to grow from its original four days to four months this year. As a result, she says, the museum plans to use the sculpture garden as a backdrop for its 50th anniversary in January, complete with a full orchestra in the park.

On the days when there is no orchestra, visitors to the park may hear the chirping of crickets, as imitated by a clarinet player. That’s courtesy of American artist Mungo Thomson, whose installation goes by the working title of “Cricket Solo for Clarinet.”

Abstract expressionist Mark di Suvero, 80, is the show’s oldest artist. His monumental work, Exemplar, was created in 1979 and consists of two intersecting I-beans. British land artist Richard Long will also be showing an earlier work. His Higher White Tor Circle was created in 1996 and is made up of Dartmoor granite chunks arranged in a mosaic-like circle.

George Lindemann Journal

For Thom Collins, director of the striking new Perez Art Museum Miami, the past couple of years have rushed by like the time lapse video of the construction project posted on the museum’s website: cranes moving in; rebar and concrete materializing; walls and columns shooting up; wrap-around terraces stretching out — all at dizzying speed.

Museum director Thom Collins walks among the works being installed on Tuesday October 29, 2013 for the opening in December 2013 of the Perez Art Museum Miami.

PATRICK FARRELL

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“When I was growing up in Philadelphia, we went to the art museum every month. I think the PAMM could emerge as that kind of institution for Miami, a culturally oriented town center where people and ideas meet, and where you know you will always find thoughtful, sophisticated programming.’’

Soon after arriving in Miami, Collins, who favors skinny suits and square-framed glasses, moved to a working-class neighborhood bordering art-centric Wynwood, determined to understand from the inside this young city experiencing a modern cultural boom.

“This is a place with such dynamic cultural diversity, and that gives it such potential. This is a city where the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the New World Center, the new science museum and the PAMM are all going up within a period of about 10 years. That’s remarkable. That’s instant cultural infrastructure.”

The PAMM is scheduled to open during Art Basel week, on time and within budget — though not without its share of controversy over its name honoring Miami developer Jorge Perez, who in 2010 donated $40 million in cash and art. Still, Collins is celebrating the fact that the museum has locked in more than 90 percent of its $220 million fundraising goal ($100 million came from public funds).

“There is a lot of aspiration in Miami. And a recognition that we are building a real repository for the city’s shared cultural heritage. You can see this in the support the museum is receiving.”

Collins himself managed to gain broad support from the community almost from the time he arrived — which is no small feat.

“Thom makes it all look easy,” says Michael Spring, director of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. “For the whole cultural community to move forward, you have to have top leaders at the flagship institutions who are steady professionals, who can earn the respect of the people around them.

“When you talk to Thom, you get a sense of confidence. This is someone who is a national leader in the visual arts. And he is charming, funny, good in social situations, which is very important when it comes to building relationships with donors and collectors.”

George Lindemann

The event drew more than 1,500 would-be snake killers from across the United States. News crews arrived from around the world to film the spectacle. And it netted 68 Burmese pythons, the huge non-native constrictors that have challenged alligators for supremacy in the South Florida swamps.

But there are no plans for a repeat of the Python Challenge, the two-month snake-killing contest that took place at the beginning of the year. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission called it a success despite its modest tally because it delivered a mountain of data to scientists and allowed the agency to more sharply focus the future fight against the snake.

But once was enough.

"Our primary goal for the Python Challenge was to raise awareness, and we felt like we reached that goal," said Kristen Sommers, the wildlife agency's Exotic Species Coordination Section Leader.

Everglades National Park last week hosted a meeting of representatives of various state and federal agencies to discuss how to proceed in the fight against the snakes. They assessed various tactics, such as the use of dogs and fitting female snakes with transmitters.

"All of the data is coming back and scientists are looking at it," said Linda Friar, spokeswoman for the park, the center of the infestation. "A number of these techniques work. The big challenge in South Florida is the landscape. They're very difficult to see. The challenge is how you find and remove snakes in this big wilderness that has so many protections. You have 2,400 square miles, and most of it is inaccessible. It's just a very challenging wilderness."

Hunters have never been allowed to go after pythons in Everglades National Park because national parks don't allow hunting. But the park has tried many tactics to eradicate the snakes, which are blamed for taking a growing toll on the park's wildlife, from wading birds and alligators to the rabbits, raccoons and opossums that had once been common sites along the main park road.

"It remains a high priority, and we're concerned," said Friar. "We are seeing less small mammals. We know through necropsies that they eat them, in addition to wading birds."

During the state's Python Challenge, which took place on Everglades lands outside the park, it quickly became clear that the most successful hunters were the ones who had experience catching pythons. So the wildlife agency has begun meeting with hunting groups to train them in the rudiments of finding and killing pythons as they tramp through the woods during hunting seasons that run roughly from August through the middle of April.

"Just because we're not having a Python Challenge, doesn't mean there aren't the opportunities for people to hunt pythons," Sommers said.

It was one such accidental encounter in May that led to the killing of the state's record python, an eighteen-foot, eight-inch monster spotted in some bushes by a man riding an all-terrain vehicle near Florida City. He killed the 128-pound female with a knife, after a long struggle in which the snake wrapped itself around his legs.

The wildlife commission has also established programs to train people who are out in the wild anyway – such as electric company workers and law enforcement officers – how to kill or where to report sightings of the snakes. Since 2010, they have trained 449 people, as well as an additional 1,000 or so in how to detect them.

George Lindemann Journal

George Lindemann Journal

At $142.4 Million, Triptych Is the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at an Auction

2013 Estate of Francis Bacon/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/DACS, London

It took seven superrich bidders to propel a 1969 Francis Bacon triptych to $142.4 million at Christie’s on Tuesday night, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. William Acquavella, the New York dealer, is thought to have bought the painting on behalf of an unidentified client, from one of Christie’s skyboxes overlooking the auction.

The price for the painting, which depicts Lucian Freud, Bacon’s friend and rival, perched on a wooden chair, was more than the $85 million Christie’s had estimated. It also toppled the previous record set in May 2012 when Edvard Munch’s fabled pastel of “The Scream” sold at Sotheby’s for $119.9 million and broke the previous record for the artist at auction set at the peak of the market in May 2008, when Sotheby’s sold a triptych from 1976 to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich for $86.2 million.

When the bidding for “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” finally stopped, after more than 10 fraught minutes, the overflowing crowd in the salesroom burst into applause. Two disappointed bidders could be seen leaving the room. “I went to $101 million but it hardly mattered,” said Larry Gagosian, the super-dealer who was trying to buy the painting on behalf of a client. Another contender was Hong Gyu Shin, the director of the Shin Gallery on Grand Street in Manhattan, who said he was bidding for himself.

“I was expecting it to go for around $87 million,” Mr. Shin said. Although he explained that he collects mostly Japanese woodblock prints and old master paintings, he found the triptych by the Irish-born painter, who died in 1992, irresistible. “I loved that painting and I couldn’t control myself,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll have another chance.”

For more than a month now, Christie’s has been billing the sale as a landmark event with a greater number of paintings and sculptures estimated to sell for over $20 million than it has ever had before. The hard sell apparently worked. Nearly 10,000 visitors flocked to its galleries to preview the auction. The sale totaled $691.5 million, far above Christie’s $670.4 million high estimate, becoming the most expensive auction ever. It outstripped the $495 million total set at Christie’s in May.

Of the 69 works on offer, only six failed to sell. All told, 10 world record prices were achieved for artists who, besides Bacon, included Christopher Wool, Ad Reinhardt, Donald Judd and Willem de Kooning.

The sale was also a place to see and be seen. Christie’s Rockefeller Center salesroom was standing room only, with collectors including Michael Ovitz, the Los Angeles talent agent; Aby Rosen, the New York real estate developer; Martin Margulies, from Miami; Donald B. Marron, the New York financier; and Daniel S. Loeb, the activist investor and hedge fund manager.

The Bacon triptych was not the only highflier. A 10-foot-tall mirror-polished stainless steel sculpture that resembled a child’s party favor, Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Dog (Orange)” sold to another telephone bidder for $58.4 million, above its high $55 million estimate, becoming the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction. The pooch was being sold by Peter M. Brant, the newsprint magnate who auctioned the canine to raise money to endow his Greenwich, Conn., foundation. In the 1990s, Mr. Koons had created the sculpture in an edition of five, each in a different color. Four celebrated collectors own the others: Steven A. Cohen, the hedge-fund billionaire, has a yellow one; Eli Broad, the Los Angeles financier, owns a blue one; François Pinault, the French luxury goods magnate and owner of Christie’s, has the magenta version; and Dakis Joannou, the Greek industrialist, has his in red. Christie’s had estimated Mr. Brant’s sculpture would fetch $35 million to $55 million.

(Final prices include the buyer’s premium: 25 percent of the first $100,000; 20 percent of the next $100,000 to $2 million; and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect commissions.)

Another strong price was set for a classic image in contemporary art history — Andy Warhol’s “Coca Cola [3],” one of only four paintings of a single Coca-Cola bottle that the artist made in 1961 and 1962. Jose Mugrabi, the New York dealer, bought the painting from S. I. Newhouse Jr. in 1986 and he was said to be selling it on Tuesday night. That painting made $57.2 million. It had been estimated to sell for $40 million to $60 million.

Three bidders went for Rothko’s “No. 11 (Untitled),” one of the artist’s abstract canvases, this one in an orange palette and created in 1957. It was being sold by the estate of Bruce J. Wasserstein, the financier who died in 2009. Christophe van de Weghe, a Manhattan dealer, bought the painting for $46 million, above its high $35 million estimate. Mr. van de Weghe also bought “Apocalypse Now,” a seminal painting by Mr. Wool, whose work is currently the subject of a major retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Bidding on behalf of a client, he paid $26.4 million for the painting. Created in 1988, the white canvas is filled with the words “Sell the House Sell the Car Sell the Kids,” a line from the Francis Ford Coppola movie of the same title. The painting belonged to David Ganek, the former New York hedge fund manager and Guggenheim board member. Mr. Ganek has since resigned from the board.

After the sale, Jussi Pylkkänen, chairman of Christie’s Europe and the evening’s auctioneer, noted how international the bidding was. Besides a healthy showing of American bidders, there were also a lot of potential buyers from Asia and Europe trying to get into the action. “There were more players from the New World than ever before,” he said, “and more people spending over $20 million.

“But,” he warned, in order to have such a successful sale, “you have to have the material.”

George Lindemann Journal

After Christie's bumpy lead-in to the New York fall auctions, Sotheby's held a robust sale of Impressionist and modern art on Wednesday that could reassure collectors about the trajectory of the market overall.

Alberto Giacometti's "Large Thin Head (Large Head of Diego)" sold for $50 million at auction in New York Wednesday. Reuters

Earlier this week, Christie's three-day series of Impressionist and modern art sales totaled $293.7 million. On Wednesday, Sotheby's got nearly that much from its evening sale alone. Its $290.2 million total represented one of the highest in the company's history, thanks to a trio of pieces that each topped $30 million.

New York dealer Bill Acquavella, who buys for American billionaires, paid $50 million for Alberto Giacometti's "Large Thin Head (Large Head of Diego)," a 2-foot-tall, spindly bronze bust of the artist's brother that was priced to sell for $35 million to $50 million. An anonymous telephone bidder also paid $39.9 million for Pablo Picasso's colorful 1935 portrait of his mistress sporting a purple beret, "Head of a Woman." That painting was only expected to sell for up to $30 million.

Picasso's cherry-red, 1969 portrait of a swashbuckling musketeer, "Musketeer with a Pipe," also sold for $30.9 million, exceeding its $18 million high estimate and resetting the high bar for a late-era work by the artist. The buyer was Monte Carlo dealer David Nahmad, whose son Helly was recently accused by federal prosecutors in Manhattan of participating in an illegal gambling ring. The Nahmads have denied any wrongdoing.

The art market is a high-stakes table all its own, and Sotheby's said collectors from 13 countries anted up on Wednesday—notably those hailing from the U.S., Switzerland and Latin America. Collectors from the last group, including Brazilians, took home Francis Picabia's $8.8 million "Volucelle II," a confection of black-and-white stripes dotted with colorful, bowling ball-shaped orbs, as well as works by Marc Chagall. Chinese collectors also underbid heavily for classic examples of Impressionists like Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet.

At least five bidders chased after Monet's shivery "Icicles," and a telephone bidder won it—after a protracted bidding war—for $16.1 million, over its $14 million high estimate.

Dealers said Sotheby's won out this week in part by offering works that hadn't been traded lately in the marketplace, which gave the works a where's-that-been freshness that collectors crave. Only a dozen of its 64 offerings had even turned up at auction in the past two decades and several of the priciest offerings, like the Giacometti bronze, were auction first-timers. After Christie's saw some of its most expensive examples by Picasso fail to find takers earlier this week, Sotheby's also had the luxury of time to go back to its sellers and adjust their reserves, or minimum asking prices, downward. Bidding for some of Sotheby's works, like a Juan Gris that sold for $8.8 million, started at $4.7 million—well below a typical starting price.

But bidders at Sotheby's also exuded more exuberance, a sign they may have simply preferred the house's offerings over its rival this time around. The telephone buyer of the Gris also picked up a $1.9 million Giorgio de Chirico, a $2.6 million Jacques Lipschitz, and a $1.4 million Auguste Rodin.

Overall, 52 of Sotheby's 64 pieces found buyers, helping the sale achieve a strong 92.3% of its potential presale value. Records were broken for artists like Picabia, Lipschitz, Jean Arp, and Gustave Courbet.

After the sale, Sotheby's specialist Simon Shaw said collectors are still willing to shop, but they no longer want to overpay. "The market sorts out what's truly great."