«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

Sales (at Art Basel Miami) echoed what the recent New York auctions had intimated: the uppermost tier of the art industry is chugging along.“People are pumped up. They have money they don’t know what to do with,” said Houston Pop-art collector Frank Herzog, who is leading tours coordinated by AXA Art Insurance Ltd.During the opening hours, New York’s Acquavella Galleries sold a prime 1956 painting by the late California painter Richard Diebenkorn titled “Man Drawing.’’ The work was priced around $5 million, according to dealers. The same painting had sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 2005 for $2.1 million.

-Business Week
Dec 2 2010