Two of Banksy’s Central Park “Spray Art” Canvases Sell for $214,000 USD

A New Zealand woman has hit the jackpot in the art world after selling two Banksy canvases for $214,000 USD at Bonhams, works which she purchased for just a fraction of the final selling price. The unsuspecting investor paid $60 USD a piece back in October last year during Banksy’s “New York residency.” The pair of authentic stencils, Kids on Guns and Winne The Pooh, are two of a series of pieces sold that day at an anonymous and nondescript stall outside Central Park.

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"Fruit in the Garden" By Traver Dodorye

Traver Dodorye creates piece "Fruit in the Garden" as a project for his mother. Traver was inspired to do this piece by his mom and older brother arguing about there opinion on adam and eve in the garden. As his brother felt one way his mom tried to get him to understand what it meant but they both were expressing their own opinion. 

The Subtleties of Kara Walker’s Domino Sugar Sculpture

As part of the New York Public Library’s “LIVE from the NYPL” series, artist Kara Walker talks to Jad Abumrad, co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab, about her latest work at the Domino Sugar Factory.

Built in 1865 by the Havemeyer family, the Domino Sugar Factory on Brooklyn’s Williamsburg waterfront was once the largest sugar refinery in the world. But the factory has been shuttered for the past decade and many of the buildings on the abandoned site are being demolished to make way for a $1.5 billion mixed-use development.
With construction scheduled to start at the end of this year, the site has recently become a hive of weekend activity. A monumental public art installation by artist Kara Walker is drawing thousands of visitors.
The work is formally titled “A Subtlety,” after the sugar sculptures that decorated royal banquets of the Medieval era, when sugar was a luxury commodity. The installation is situated in the refinery’s massive storage shed and consists of a 75-foot long sculpture constructed from 35 tons of sugar.  The massive white figure is shaped like a sphinx and is surrounded by a series of small candy boy sculptures. The subtitle of the piece is “the Marvelous Sugar Baby an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant.”  The installation was commissioned by the public art nonprofit Creative Time.
Jad Abumrad, the co-host of WNYC’s Radiolab, interviewed Walker for the New York Public Library’s “LIVE from the NYPL” series.
“When I was approached by Creative Time to, you know, maybe work on something like this, a big project, Domino space, loaded with history [...] Well, let’s say I was a little cautious, ambivalent, until I saw the space. And then I saw all of this potential, and I felt my whole potential as an artist expand,” Walker told Abumrad.
Walker is primarily known for creating installations, drawings and paintings which focus on issues of race, power and violence. In 1997, she was the youngest artist to receive a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.  “A Subtlety” is her first attempt at both sculpture and a large-scale public art project.
Despite the dark history behind the sugar trade, Walker said she ultimately opted for a more optimistic route for the piece and took on the “chutzpah of the industrialists.”
“To only look at the underbelly and the blood, it elicits vengeful angry feelings, but not necessarily art that I would want to look at or make.  To have the other side of it meant that I could bring these two opposing universes together, and I think that they’re percolating in me in different forms anyway.”
The exhibition is free and open to view on Fridays from 4–8pm (excluding July 4), Saturdays from 12–6pm, and Sundays from 12–6pm through July 6.

Art Junkie by Dodorye

Hamptonite Arrested for Peddling Fake Jackson Pollocks on eBay

The FBI has taken into custody an East Hampton man for an eBay-based art forgery scheme that netted nearly $1.9 million for over 60 fake Jackson Pollock paintings, reports East Hampton Star.

Allegedly, 54-year-old John D. Re began his eBay racket in 2005, telling private collectors who responded to his listings that he had come into a cache of Pollock paintings in 1999 while clearing out the basement of Barbara Schulte, an East Hampton woman whose husband George, a woodworker and antique restorer, had died three years prior. Schulte later moved to Marblehead, Mass., and died in 2013.

Re was arrested Friday June 27 by East Hampton Village police for driving with a suspended license, and was turned over to the FBI. He has since been released on $150,000 bond. His previous brushes with the law include a 1995 conviction as part of a counterfeit money ring, probation violations, leaving the scene of an accident, and weapons-related charges.

While it is unclear who created the forged works, the complaint notes that Re is also a painter and his work is “Abstract Expressionist in style.” Re used shill bidders to drive up the price on his auctions.

Of more than 60 faux-Pollocks sold, 58 went to Re’s first buyer, identified as “Collector 2,” for a total of $519,890, while an additional 12 works went to “Collector 1” for $894,500, and “Collector 3″ bought three for $475,000. Two other collectors were also involved.

The FBI describes the individual prices paid for each piece by Collector 2 as so far below market (ranging from about $1,000 up to $60,000) that it should have been obvious they were not real. Unsurprisingly, the forgery scheme began to crumble when the collectors showed their finds to outsiders.

In 2007, when an expert examined one of the pieces, Collector 1 discovered that the “materials in the painting were not available during Pollock’s lifetime.” Likewise, Collector 2 turned to the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR) for authentication help in 2011, despite Re’s efforts to dissuade him with “horror stories” about the organization and “the expert bullshit.”

Eventually, IFAR examined 45 paintings and found them all to be fake, noting that as a group, the paintings were “remarkably, and disturbingly, analogous to each other in palette, composition, and overall execution, much more similar, in fact, than any of Pollock’s authentic works are to each other.” The organization also found that “several members of Mr. Schulte’s immediate family, as well as his close friends, informed IFAR that Mr. Schulte never claimed to own artworks by Pollock.”

Collector 3 also uncovered the paintings’ shady provenance when a Manhattan art dealer attempted to wipe away a smudge of dirt after licking his finger, and some paint came off.

As part of the FBI investigation against Re, the scammer’s email correspondence was monitored. “I BELIEVE I HAVE FOUND WHAT WOULD BE CONCIDERED THE GREATEST CONTEMPORARY ART FIND IN HISTORY,” Re wrote to Collector 2 in 2011.

Re’s phone line was also tapped during a call with Collector 3 back in November 2013, in which Re threatened the collector for not returning two of the paintings, saying “I grew up in Brooklyn, okay? My mother’s from the Bonanno family, which means Gambino. If you got to call me back one more time, your mother’s going to start wondering why you stopped visiting her.”

Meredith Savona , an FBI agent in the art theft and art fraud division, interviewed Re last month, ahead of the arrest. He denied claiming the paintings were authentic during the course of the sale, but email records included in the complaint find statements to the contrary: “This is a very strong Pollock. Slight crackling throughout, and a very little browning on the front. More on the rear. Not bad for a 62 to 64-year-old painting that has been in a basement for maybe 55 of those years.”

“Re said he would take the weight for anything he did that was wrong, but that he did not think he had done anything wrong,” Savona wrote in her report.

News of a similar scheme in the UK run by a vicar’s son also broke this weekend (see Telegraph report).

Olyvia Kwok sued by Sotheby’s Over Unpaid-For Basquiat and Twombly Works

Sotheby’s London has issued art and jewelry investor Olyvia Kwok with a £3 million High Court writ for purchasing two artworks on behalf of a client who was unable to pay for them, the Telegraph has reported. Kwok successfully bid £2.49 million for “Water-Worshipper” by Jean-Michel Basquiat and £386,500 for “Idilli” by Cy Twombly at the Contemporary Art Evening Auction back in February. At the time, Kwok described the Basquiat purchase as “a bargain,” adding, “I believe that by the end of the year it will be in a different league. In 18 months we are looking to double what we paid.

Since then, Kwok has claimed that she was acting on behalf of a European client based in Hong Kong, who later failed to produce the funds. She was introduced to the client through a mutual friend. “In ten years of dealings in the business I have never found my trust has been breached in this way,” she said. Sotheby’s filed a High Court writ demanding the £2,974,400 owed, plus interest of £43,964.08. It has also retained the works. However, a spokesperson for the auction house confirmed that while the writ has been issued, the parties involved are “in the process of resolving the matter.”

“We’ve now been paid the majority of the proceeds, and payment in full is in the process of being amicably resolved,” the spokesperson said.

Kwok became an art dealer at the age of 22, with guidance from her godfather Conor Mahony — a former vice-president of the Chinese department at Sotheby’s. She went on to purchase artworks for a private bank in Geneva as part of its $50 million hedge fund. She opened her own gallery in London in 2005, but moved into art investing in 2009 after prices across the art market fell.