«I LIKE EVERYBODY'S ART»

Artwork by Bruce Nauman

PHILOSOPHY FOR THE 21st CENTURY: DANCE FLOOR

You should always be on the dance floor every single night at 22 then leave it for good at 32. Thanks God I understood both at the right time...

«THEY ALWAYS HAD GREAT GIRLS MODELS BUT NOW THE BOYS MODELS ARE JUST AS GOOD»

BLAME IT ON ANDY

«I blame everything on him. I would say this. If there is a Starbucks in Rome, that's its fault»

-Fran Lebowitz

JASPER JOHNS

A few weeks shy of 81, Johns says he’s pretty much the same person he’s always been, beginning with his bleak childhood in South Carolina, where he was shunted from relative to relative, and his arrival in New York City at the age of 19, determined to become an artist. “There was a lot of desire,” he says, “and a lot of ineptitude.”That last bit has surely changed. One of contemporary art’s great masters, he remains a vital practitioner. The past decade has proved an unusually fruitful late period. First came his “Catenary” series of paintings, grey canvases with strings slung between points, and on May 6 he will debut a batch of new sculptures at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York’s Chelsea

-Financial Times
April 29 2011

«THEY ALWAYS HAD GREAT GIRLS MODELS BUT NOW THE BOYS MODELS ARE JUST AS GOOD»

POST WARHOL PREDICTION: JEWISH MAG: IS THE MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM AND KATE GOOD FOR THE JEWS?

«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

The obvious, already-engaged debate about "Art in the Streets," the show that L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art bills as "the first major U.S. museum exhibition on the history of graffiti and street art," is whether the genre deserves to be certified as museum-quality or decried as vandalism. But look beneath that surface, and the show at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary also poses questions that have roiled the museum world for the better part of a decade. In planning and executing an exhibition, when is it OK for a nonprofit art museum to forge ties with a profit-seeking art entrepreneur?Roger Gastman, hired as the show's associate curator, has both ironclad credentials as a historian of street art and a clear commercial interest in it via R. Rock Enterprises, a marketing company he has run for years. Dubbed R. Rock's "dictator" on his business card, Gastman sells his services — and those of an array of artists with whom he has close connections — to advertisers interested in generating buzz and sales by hitching their products to the street-art phenomenon.

-Los Angeles Times
April 28 2011

IT'S USELESS TO BE YOUNG WITHOUT BEING BEAUTIFUL AND VICE VERSA

«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

Adam Lindemann’s view of Robert Scull, the collector who sold his collection at that 1973 auction and was pilloried for it, has to be put in the context of Lindemann’s own brush with infamy when he allegedly flipped Jeff Koons’s Hanging Heart back to the gallerist he bought it from for a profit of almost $20 million. (“Our role is against the dealers,” says Lindemann at one point. “We try to get one over on the dealers.”) Lindemann refuses to comment on the Koons deal specifically, saying only that “I never bought anything I intended to resell” while his wife looks on with a priceless look of skepticism. And he does then admit that he has flipped art in the past. But the bigger message of this interview, I think, is that what we’re seeing here is a plutocrat at play. Lindemann loves buying and selling art — probably more than he loves the art itself. And he can easily afford to lose millions of dollars if a deal goes wrong. It’s a fun game for him. But it does ultimately put the lie to the idea that art is some kind of long-term store of value, rather than a plaything for plutocrats.

Reuters
April 27 2010

THE KEY TO BE A GREAT ARTIST

«Everything is beautitful» -Andy Warhol

«Everyone, I loved passionately. And I even think I would like a door knob, a chamber pot. whatever» -Pablo Picasso.

«BEAUTY IS A SIGN OF INTELLIGENCE»

FOR BETTER OR WORSE

«Celebrity has become for better or worse an art form. So that's part of the heritage of Andy Warhol»

-Jeffrey Dietch
MOCA director

THE JEWISH ART OF LOOKING AT VISUAL ARTS

Professor Leo Steinberg, who died on March 13 aged 90, was a maverick but influential art historian who covered the field from the Renaissance to Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg; in The Painted Word (1975), Tom Wolfe numbered him (with Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg) among the "kings of Cultureburg" – people who dominated the field of art criticism.

-The Telegraph
April 11 2011

«MORE THAN ANYTHING PEOPLE JUST WANT STARS»

Whereas Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, Wesselman and Rosenquist are all acknowledged as leading Pop artists alongside Warhol in the 1960s, only “Andy” has become the personification of the very era and the glamor he immortalized. It was the legendary dealer Ivan Karp of the Leo Castelli Gallery, who suggested to Warhol that he paint his first self-portrait. “You know, people want to see you. Your looks are responsible for a certain part of your fame, they feed the imagination” (I. Karp, as cited in C. Ratcliff, Andy Warhol, New York, 1983, p.52). Karp enlisted the support of pioneering Detroit collector Florence Barron. She had initially been taken to Warhol’s studio to discuss the commission of her own portrait. In what was a brilliant reversal of the typical artist-patron relationship, Barron proposed instead that she would commission Warhol to paint his portrait for her - and to turn the icon-making apparatus of his Pop art vision on himself.

-Christies

«I LIKE EVERYBODY'S ART»

Artwork by Art Wei Wei

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Justin Timberlake to host Saturday Night Live in May.

-Next!

«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

DURING the Oscars weekend last February, art dealer Larry Gagosian held a private lunch at the $US15.5 million ($14.4m) home he recently bought in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles. His glass-enclosed house had been decorated for the occasion by artist Richard Prince, and its walls were lined with his portraits of beach beauties and pulp-novel nurses.
As guests including financier Ron Perelman and actress Renee Zellweger navigated the home's skylit hallways, Gagosian and his staff mingled with guests, discreetly passing a rolled-up sheet of paper between them like a baton. The sheet listed prices for nearly every artwork in sight.With an unrelenting focus on selling, Gagosian, 65, has become the most powerful art dealer in the world. He represents the estates and careers of 77 of the world's top artists, including Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Cy Twombly, Richard Serra, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and Ed Ruscha.

-theaustralian.com

«BEAUTY IS A SIGN OF INTELLIGENCE»

PHILOSOPHY FOR THE 21st CENTURY: QUESTION

Was the sexual revolution really to end up having 8 year old girls reading about the sexiest dress, shoes and bags of their favorite stars?.....

ADVERTISING IN THE 21st CENTURY

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Angelina Jolie new face of Louis Vuitton.

-Next!

«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

Two former editors of magazines devoted to shirtless teenage boys have teamed up to launch two new publication, both of which will — SURPRISE! — feature scantily-clad young men. The magazine industry certainly isn’t at its high point, with many publications closing up shop after decades of publishing. However, the state of the industry isn’t deterring Peter Ian Cummings, former editor of the iconic gay youth magazine XY, and Savas Abadsidis, former editor of the perhaps equally iconic Abercrombie & Fitch Quarterly, from launching two new magazines that follow in the footsteps of their failed predecessors.

www.justout.com

«MY FAVORITE THING TO BUY IS UNDERWEAR»

À LA LENNY BRUCE

Salvador Dali painting: jewish
Salvador Dali books: goyim
Early Salvador Dali: goyim
Late Salvador Dali: jewish
André Breton: jewish
Man Ray: jewish
Jeff Koons xxx paintings with Ciccolina: jewish
Buying Jeff Koons in the 1980's: jewish
Buying Jeff Koons now: goyim
Eli Broad: goyim
Eli Broad talking about art: jewish
Steve Wynn; jewish, jewish , jewish
Steve Wynn putting two 100 millions Picasso paintings one next to another: goyim

«THE ONLY GOAL I HAVE IS TO HAVE A SWIMMING POOL IN HOLLYWOOD»

Artwork by David Hockney

WARHOLIAN QUOTE OF THE DAY

«Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.”

-Cioran

PHILOSOPHY FOR THE 21st CENTURY: TIME TO GROW UP

In the 21st century ageing gay men in leather has become the new very image of unsexy and infantilism.

«MUSCLES ARE GREAT: EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST ONE THAT THEY CAN SHOW OFF»

WARHOLIAN QUOTE OF THE DAY

«Strong women only marry weak men»

-Bette Davis

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Jersey Shore's Snooki reveals her new diet.

-Next!

«I NEVER READ. I JUST LOOK AT PICTURES»

LOVE IT!

«To me designer jeans is a concept at odds with itself. It's like educational television. They cancel each other out»

-Fran Lebowitz.

IN CONVERSATION WITH 16 YEAR OLD MICHAEL JACKSON

MJ: Do you have any kids?
AW: Me? I don't believe in marrying.
MJ: Really? Why not.
AW: I don't believe in love
MJ:Really? You don't, you just date?
AW: Yes, I like to date.

-Interview magazine
Mars 1977

«PERSONNALY I LOVED PORNO AND I BOUGHT LOTS OF IT ALL THE TIME"

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Paris Hilton spends time in Disneyland.

-Next!

MASS CULTURE

Rather than reinventing Warhol under the sign of this or that avant-garde artist, why not take his fascination with mass culture seriously? Why not look closely at the subjects and surfaces which Warhol actually worked -- and worked over -- rather than refer his art, yet again, to some earlier source within the history of modernism? Why not, for example, think seriously about Warhol’s roots as a commercial illustrator and graphic designer, about his expertise in the language of advertising and the solicitation of consumerist desire? Surely, Warhol’s commercial illustrations of the 1950s are no less relevant to his Pop art of the 1960s than are a set of Goya etchings or Schwitters collages. In positioning Warhol as a “classic modernist,” the retrospective not only suppresses his commercial expertise but also his identity as a queer artist. Questions of same-sex desire, effeminacy, and cross-dressing, not to mention the complex links between gay subculture and the mass media, deserve to be taken seriously within any full-scale retrospective of Warhol’s career.

-Richard Meyer

«THEY LOOK TERRIFIC AND THEY KNOW IT AND THEY KNOW THAT YOU KNOW IT»

MONEY

«Money is SUSPICIOUS, because people think you're not supposed to have it, even if you do have it.»

-The philosophy of Andy Warhol

À LA LENNY BRUCE

Damien Hirt dots painting: goyim
Damien Hirst butturfly paintings: jewish
Julain Schnabel: jewish
Julian Schabel broken plates: goyim
Julian Schabel movies: jewish
Keith Haring: jewish
Keith Haring paintings: goyim
Keith Haring scluptures: jewish

«THE WORLD FASCINATES ME»

BERNARD HENRY LEVY À PROPOS DU JOURNAL D'ANDY WARHOL

" Je n'ai pas de mémoire, disait Andy Warhol. Mon cerveau est comme un magnétophone qui aurait une seule touche, pour effacer. " Moyennant quoi le maître du pop art a passé les dix dernières années de sa vie à appeler chaque matin sa collaboratrice, Pat Hackett, pour lui dicter les moindres détails de la nuit qu'il venait de passer explique Bernard-Henri Lévy dans la présentation du Journal d’ Andy Warhol. Le résultat, continue BHL, est une passionnante succession de scènes, cruelles ou cocasses, misérables ou scabreuses, où défile tout ce que le théâtre new-yorkais a pu compter de personnages. De Truman Capote à Jackie Onassis, de John Lennon à Donald Trump, Grace Jones ou Liz Taylor, ils sont tous là, épinglés par ce collectionneur de génie qui les observait mine de rien et consignait leurs grimaces sur son polaroïd intérieur.Et c'est avec un plaisir probablement égal à celui qu'ont dû éprouver - toutes proportions gardées - les contemporains de Saint-Simon ou du cardinal de Retz que l'on assiste à ces soupers, fêtes en tout genre et coke-parties qui ont fait les riches heures du " Studio 54 " et de la " Factory ".

-EVENE

«MUSCLES ARE GREAT: EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST ONE THAT THEY CAN SHOW OFF»

«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

NEW YORK (AP) — A 1986 self-portrait by Andy Warhol that was among the last of his paintings to be exhibited while he was alive is heading for the auction block, where it is estimated to sell for up to $40 million.The stark red-on-black "Self-Portrait" is scheduled to be sold at Christie's post-war and contemporary art sale on May 11, the auction house announced Wednesday. The owner is a private American collector who purchased it in 1996 and wished to remain anonymous.The piece, measuring 9 feet per side, is considered a landmark work by the American Pop artist. Created toward the end of his life, it shows the artist looking directly at the viewer, his trademark hair standing straight up."With his unique ability to fuse painting and photograph into an unforgettably iconic image, Warhol condensed all the recent themes of his art in this magnificent

POST WARHOL PREDICTION: IN THE FUTURE BLASÉ BILLIONAIRES WILL BID FOR «LAURENT DE MEDICIS AURA» AT SOTHEBY'S

«I LIKE EVERYBODY'S ART»

Artwork by Chris Ofili

ALL ABOUT BEING YOUNG

«Some people decide to be old and then they do exactly what old people are supposed to do. But when they were twenty years old they were doing what twenty-year-olds are supposed to do. And then there are those other people who look twenty all their lives. It's thrilling to see movie stars— since they're more involved in that than most people—who have worked on their beauty, who still have all their energy because they're still working with their young selves»

-The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Lady GaGa call comparison to Madonna «retarded.»

-Next!

YOUTH WITHOUT COCKINESS IS NO YOUTH AT ALL

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Madonna has left kabbalah.

-Next!

«KIDS ARE THE ONES WHO FALL IN LOVE»

Artwork by Keith Haring

À LA LENNY BRUCE

Giving blow job: goyim
Getting blow job: jewish
Buy bling bling: goyim
Selling bling bling: jewish
Andy Warhol in the 60's jewish
Andy Warhol in the 70's: goyim
Andy Warhol in the 80's : jewish
Ivan Karp: goyim
Ivan Karp telling Warhol he shouldn't drip when painting his soup can: jewish
Leo Castelli: jewish
Leo Castelli exhibiting Warhol's dollar signs paintings: goyim

«ATHLETES REALLY DO HAVE THE FAT IN THE RIGHT PLACE AND THEY LOOK YOUNG IN THE RIGHT PLACE»

POST WARHOL PREDICTION: IN THE FUTURE THERE WILL BE A NEW FORMULA ONE RACING TEAM WITH CARS PAINTED BY JEFF KOONS & DAMIEN HIRST

MODELS

Beauties in photographs are different from beauties in person. It must be hard to be a model, because you'd want to be like the photograph of you, and you can't ever look that way. And so you start to copy the photograph. Photographs usually bring in another half-dimension. (Movies bring in another whole dimension. That screen magnetism is something secret—if you could only figure out what it is and how to make it, you'd have a really good product to sell. But you can't even tell if someone has it until you actually see them up there on the screen. You have to give screen tests to find out.)

-THe Philosophy of Andy Warhol

IT'S USELESS TO BE YOUNG WITHOUT BEING BEAUTIFUL AND VICE VERSA

POST WARHOL PREDICTION:JEWISH MAG: ARE ART FUNDS GOOD FOR THE JEWS?

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Angelina Jolie debuts first jewelry collection.

-Next!

YOUTH WITHOUT COCKINESS IS NO YOUTH AT ALL

«I LIKE MONEY ON THE WALL»

The self-portrait of pop artist Andy Warhol is expected to draw a minimum of $20 million to $30 million when it is auctioned May 11 by Christie’s International in New York. The painting, which cost Detroit collector Florence Barron $1,600 in 1963, was originally discussed as a portrait of her, said Brett Gorvy, international co-head of post war art and contemporary art at Christie’s.However, he told CNBC Monday, when Barron met Warhol she told him, “Nobody knows me...They want to see you.”
The painting is the first to be sold from the Barron collection.

«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

Two selling exhibitions of works by the Spanish surrealist Joan Miró take place this month in London to coincide with Tate Modern’s exhibition which opens this week. At the Andipa Gallery in Knightsbridge, are prints, which range from £4,000 to £38,000, and drawings priced up to £200,000. Several have been sold already. At Connaught Brown in Mayfair from April 28 are 20 paintings and drawings, some dating back to the 1930s.

-The Telegraph
April 13 2011

«MY FAVORITE THING TO BUY IS UNDERWEAR»

FAME

A good reason to be famous, though, is so you can read all the big magazines and know everybody in all the stories. Page after page it's just all people you've met. I love that kind of reading experience and that's the best reason to be famous.

-The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

«MUSCLES ARE GREAT: EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST ONE THAT THEY CAN SHOW OFF»

POST WARHOL PREDICTION: JEWISH MAG: IS THE HIGH PRICE OF CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART GOOD FOR THE JEWS?

«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

An Andy Warhol self-portrait purchased in 1963 for $1,600 on an installment plan is poised to fetch $30 million or more when it hits the auction block at Christie's in May."Self-Portrait," a four-panel acrylic silkscreen depicting the pop artist wearing a trench coat and sunglasses, is being sold by the family of Detroit collector Florence Barron.Barron first commissioned Warhol to paint her portrait, but changed her mind and suggested the young artist depict himself, telling him, "Nobody knows me ... They want to see you."The result was Warhol's first self portrait, four images taken in a coin-operated photo booth rendered in hues of blue.

-Reuters

«I NEVER MET AN ANIMAL I DIDN'T LIKE»

«I LIKE MONEY ON THE WALL»

As part of its spring season of sales in the territory, Sotheby’s dispersed 106 works of contemporary Chinese art from the much larger collection of Belgian food baron Guy Ullens (and founder of the non-profit Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing). The works were of great interest, dating from the 1980s and documenting the beginnings of avant-garde art in China. Its target was $16.7m but here again bidding was frenetic and when the dust had settled the sale had racked up over $54.7m, with all the lots sold and new price highs established for a posse of artists including market stalwart Zhang Xiogang (“Forever Lasting Love”, 1988, at $10.1m) as well as Wang Guangyi (“Mao Zedong, P2”, 1988, at $2.5m). The Zhang price also set a new record for any work of Chinese contemporary art: buyers were mainly Asian private collectors but American private bidders snagged two of the top ten lots.

-Financial Times

FROM SUPERSTAR TO HYPERSTAR

So I was shot at my place of business: Andy Warhol Enterprises. At that point, in 1968, Andy Warhol Enterprises consisted of a few people who worked for me on a fairly regular basis, a lot of what you might call free-lancers who worked on specific projects, and a lot of "superstars" or "hyperstars" or whatever you can call all the people who are very talented, but whose talents are hard to define and almost impossible to market.

-The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

«I LIKE EVERYBODY'S ART»

Artwork by Louise Bourgeois

POST WARHOL PREDICTION: IN THE FUTURE TOP HOLLYWOOD ACTORS WILL BE LISTED ON THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

THE BEAUTY OBSESSION

«I always hear myself saying, "She's a beauty!" or "He's a beauty!" or "What a beauty!" but I never know what I'm talking about. I honestly don't know what beauty is, not to speak of what "a" beauty is.»

-The philosophy of Andy Warhol

«THEY ALWAYS HAD GREAT GIRLS MODELS BUT NOW THE BOYS MODELS ARE JUST AS GOOD»

«IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE»

Showtime’s Gigolos is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a program that follows five pricey straight male prostitutes as they ply their trade in Las Vegas. I used to watch the HBO show Cathouse, about the employees of the Moonlite Bunnyranch, and was curious to see whether Gigolos would essentially be the same, only with the guys doing the hard work.
Well, sort of. Gigolos is like Cathouse in that the sex is graphic and straightforward. A sex-worker’s penis appears within the first minute or so of the series, and we see intercourse within the first several minutes. Like Cathouse, there’s a certain clinical feel to the sex, too: It’s mostly business and very little seduction, and as with Cathouse, you can't help but wonder who exactly these people are who are willing to be televised having sex that they purchased.

-Avclub.com
April 7 2011

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Jay-Z launches new lifestyle website.

-Next!

IT'S USELESS TO BE YOUNG WITHOUT BEING BEAUTIFUL AND VICE VERSA

BEFORE BEING MARRIED TO FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

So in the late 50s I started an affair with my television which has continued to the present, when I play around in my bedroom with as many as four at a time. But I didn't get married until 1964 when I got my first tape recorder. My wife. My tape recorder and I have been married for ten years now. When I say "we," I mean my tape recorder and me. A lot of people don't understand that.

-The philosophy of Andy Warhol

«MUSCLES ARE GREAT: EVERYBODY SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST ONE THAT THEY CAN SHOW OFF»

MONEY

«And if you give anybody a hundred-dollar bill in the SUPERMARKET, they call the manager.»

-The philosophy of Andy Warhol

«BEAUTY IS A SIGN OF INTELLIGENCE»

LOVE AND SEX

There should be courses on beauty and love and sex. With love as the biggest course And they should show the kids, I always think, how to make love and tell and show them once and for all how nothing it is. But they won't do that, because love and sex are business.

-The philosophy of Andy Warhol

YOUTH WITHOUT COCKINESS IS NO YOUTH AT ALL

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Lady Gaga threw a drunk Adam lambert out of her birthday party.

-Next!

«THEY ALWAYS HAD GREAT GIRLS MODELS BUT NOW THE BOYS MODELS ARE JUST AS GOOD»

POST WARHOL PREDICTION: JEWISH MAG:IS MADONNA THINKING OF CUTTING TIES WITH KABBALAH GOOD FOR THE JEWS?

AMERICANS

Buying is much more American than thinking and I'm as American as they come. In Europe and the Orient people like to trade—buy and sell, sell and buy—they're basically merchants. Americans are not so interested in selling—in fact, they'd rather throw out than sell. What they really like to do is buy—people, money, countries.

-The philosophy of Andy Warhol

«MORE THAN ANYTHING PEOPLE JUST WANT STARS»

«THERE IS NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD THAT LOVES «RIGHT NOW» LIKE AMERICA DOES»

Perez Hilton writing a kid's book

-Next!

«I LIKE MONEY ON THE WALL»

In his new book, Art of the Deal, Noah Horowitz, an art historian and professor at the Sotheby’s Art Institute, argues that it’s all happened in the last fifty years -- and that the art market has become a complex, globalized, money-making machine for the well-connected. The story, as Horowitz tells it, starts in the 1950s, when museums, flush with post-war prosperity, began to grow in size and power. Museums bought up all the old art, pushing up prices -- and pushing collectors towards the contemporary art market, where prices soon began to rise, too. At the same time, the global economy became more integrated, and businesspeople got better at putting together complex, international deals of all kinds. That expertise inevitably spread into the art world.

-Boston Globe
March 8 2011

ANDY WARHOL ON BOXING: «THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG KIDS»

«GOOD BUSINESS IS THE BEST ART»

Sotheby’s stock is now near $50 a share, up considerably from the doldrums of March 2009, when shares in the firm were trading for under $7. Were you one of the smart ones who had confidence in the art market’s upside potential?
Sotheby’s top management is being rewarded, according to a recent report by Skate’s Art Market Research, with the top five executives taking home $15 million in their pay packets, which is more than double their compensation in 2009. Sotheby’s president and CEO William F. Ruprecht collected almost $6 million, about 250 percent of the $2.5 mil he earned in 2009.
Meanwhile, Sotheby’s is expanding its board, and famed restaurateur Danny Meyer, whose restaurants include Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern and Tabla, has been nominated. If elected, Meyer, 53, would become Sotheby’s youngest board member.