Ledor Fine Art

Wuzon da Block?

Starter Picasso Time was you could still land a nice Picasso canvas for under a mil. Today, with few exceptions, you’re looking at a cool 2 or 3 mil, or then some, for a starter Picasso.  Yet, more likely than not, what you get for your money is uninspiring.  So along comes this offering at Christie’s London.  I must say that the first time I leafed through their online catalogue, the painting Nature Morte à la Cruche (1937; above) didn’t catch my eye.   That first time around, I had judged it merely as one would a still life and, as such, I readily dismissed it.  After all, Picasso certainly painted many more beautiful and more clever still lifes.  But […]

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Get your tickets now!

  After five long years of abject deprivation, we can now bask in Picasso Central once again.  Following extensive renovation and a doubling of its exhibition space, Le Musée Picasso reopens tomorrow, on the maitre’s 133 birthday.  It has surely been a long, dry spell….

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Wuzon da Block?

The most beautiful and most important piece in all the auctions is amazingly underpriced.  Buffon et Jeune Acrobate, a 1905 gouache, is at Sotheby’s Imp/Mod evening sale, lot 63.  The most recent  comparable sale among the oils and works on paper (WOPs) of 1905 was this one, far smaller and less beautiful: This tiny (14.4 cm), faint, unsigned watercolor just brought down 434,500 GBP (710,083 USD) at Sotheby’s London earlier this year.  Yet the Sotheby’s estimate is only $2.5-3.5M for the present 58 cm gouache. The priciest sale of this gorgeous series of Saltimbanques on paper went for over $38M way back in around 1986, setting a record for a WOP that has not yet been broken: OK, I’d rather have

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Picasso Does Piedmont

  If you’re in the area, come hear my spiel and kibitz about–what else?  I’ve been invited to deliver this year’s kickoff lecture at the Piedmont Center for the Arts on Friday, November 14 at 5 PM. Click below for the deets. “Picasso Does Piedmont”

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Hijinks in Hong Kong

Hi, Kobi!   Just some comments on the Art Basel Hong Kong show.  Hmmm…where to start?  I met several top art dealers from NY, London, Milan, Paris, etc. who deal in Picasso.  I saw some nice Picassos (and some very disturbing Contemporary Art).  My overall impression is that the people who regularly buy from these dealers must be incredibly naive.  I won’t bore you with all the conversations, just a sampling. “Provenance? It’s in Zervos, which is a catalogue raisonné (spoken slowly apparently so my slow mind can grasp the French words)…that’s all the proof you need.  If it’s in there it’s genuine.  Here, let me show you a copy of the page.” “But what if it’s a fake?”  (Apparently

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Best in Show

This time my “best in show” pick, the 1923 TÊTE DE JEUNE HOMME, is a clear choice, despite the fact that its estimate is more than an order of magnitude lower than the top estimates.  The “show” to which I’m referring is this week’s battle between the giants, Christie’s and Sotheby’s.  The battlefield is London.   As the forces prepare for battle, perhaps you’ve noticed a stalwart young man among them, the Tête de Jeune Homme (Head of a Young Man), a full-sized drawing and a paragon of Picasso’s Neoclassical Period.  Picasso created it with black conté crayon, my favorite medium in drawing because of the glistening, bold mark it produces.  I must disclose that I haven’t traveled to London to view

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Sell Out

  The Christian Zervos 33-volume catalogue raisonné of Picasso paintings, drawings and sculptures has just been newly reprinted, a collaborative marketing effort between the original publisher, Cahiers d’Art, and Sotheby’s.  The set will soon be available for $20,000 (gulp!).  In a promotional video distributed by Sotheby’s, Staffan Ahrenberg of Cahiers d’Art states, “It contains over 16,000 images, and it has become the most important reference work on Picasso.” Well, yes and no.  For those antiquarians among us who are still stuck on the original catalogue raisonné, it lends a bit of cache if your Picasso is illustrated in Zervos, though it does not really add value and is by no means necessary to establish authenticity.  But Picasso made many more

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A Desperate Thought (for Desperate Times)

Recently I enjoyed a discussion concerning Picasso’s draftsmanship with an art historian (on the way to Jerry Day, of all things!).  Afterwards,  once my thoughts had coalesced, I jotted them down and sent them off to him as well as to another art historian.  Having not heard back from either of them in over a month, I started feeling ignored.  Is it just me, or don’t you just hate it when no one pays you attention?  So in utter desperation, I thought I might run this by you, on the outside chance that you might want to weigh in. My conversant, Tom, had held that the measure of an artist’s draftsmanship is how accurately and precisely he mimics the physical world in his art.  In

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Steal of the Season

Christie’s just completed its first Shanghai auction.  It included but one Picasso, a late oil on panel, but this 1969 Homme Assis was a doozie.  This musketeer brought in 1,906,245 USD on an estimate of 742,693 to 1,023,266 USD. Although many late Picasso paintings are oversized, about as large as a door, the better ones typically fetch 5 to 10 times this amount.  But I’m not one to overweight size relative to quality when determining value.  As for the quality of the painting, assuming late Picasso appeals to you, you may find yourself agreeing with me that it is wonderful.  I could rhapsodize at length about the style and artistic accomplishments of this hilarious musketeer, but I’ll spare you–for now.  Suffice it

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Bazinga!

  A couple of days ago we were offered Garçon à la Pipe, the Rose Period oil which, if you don’t know, sold for $104.1 in 2004, at the time the highest-priced object ever sold at auction.  (Since this writing, we have been offered this very painting multiple times, but always by dubious sources.). Usually I just round-file such emails, but this time on a lark I decided to indulge the sender. Here’s an exact transcript of the ensuing correspondence, apart from the redacted vendor’s name: Dear Mr Ledor:  We represent some owners of Master Pieces of the most relevant contemporary artist. Now we have the opportunity of offer you one of the most important Fine Arts of Picasso directly for you.  If you have

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