The $60bn art world in general is warming to the potential of cryptocurrencies, partly because of blockchain’s dual ability to establish the provenance of works of art and thereby reduce the reliance on brokers and other middlemen. Marcelo Garcia Casil, for example, is chief executive and co-founder of Maecenas, an online marketplace that will enable
Dmitry Rybolovlev thought he’d been ripped off when he paid the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier $127.5 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in 2013, once he learned Bouvier had paid between $75 and $80 million for it. But after Salvator Mundi’s sale in November at Christie’s for $450.3 million, it was hard to
When it comes to major art fairs in southeast Asia, Art Basel Hong Kong sets the tone. Since it launched in 2013, the fair has made the city into a true destination on the annual art fair circuit. That’s a pattern the organizers of the inaugural UBS-sponsored Taipei Dangdai art fair, which opens this week (January 18–20, with
The value of a Picasso or a Ferrari typically rises in a strong economy, as do shares in a consumer staple like Procter & Gamble. But when the economy sours, those shares may be easier than the other possessions to shed. As wealthy collectors pull back on extravagances, investors could get stuck holding an asset
“Glad to be partners… Speak soon, I.” That’s how now disgraced art dealer Inigo Philbrick signed off a June 2013 email to his former friend and investor Andre Sakhai when he sold him a 50 percent share of a Wade Guyton painting, for $350,000. Sakhai, through his shell company V&A Collections, is now pursuing legal
The discovery that upended Jan Six’s life occurred one day in November 2016. Six is a 40-year-old Dutch art dealer based in Amsterdam, who attracted worldwide attention last year with the news that he had unearthed a previously unknown painting by Rembrandt, the most revered of Dutch masters — the first unknown Rembrandt to come
On a Monday in late June, after the Art Basel fair in Basel, Switzerland, the billionaire collector Dakis Joannou docked his yacht in the small harbor of the Greek isle of Hydra. The yacht’s exterior is covered in a kaleidoscopic pattern that was designed by Jeff Koons, and it is called Guilty. That night, I
Is the old adage “practice what you preach” not applicable to the art world? Recent legal proceedings highlight how apparently difficult it can be even for those steeped in the art market to consistently follow that advice. A prominent New York dealer who has served as an expert witness in lawsuits concerning art deals gone
Two fraudulent art investment companies in the UK that raked in more than $1.3 million from unsuspecting investors have been shut down. Authorities will now oversee the re-distribution of assets to, hopefully, some of those who were duped. Gem Tobin Ltd, based in Cheshire, and Dinonysus Design Services Ltd., in York, were turned over to
A blue-chip art dealer with galleries in London and Miami is facing a worldwide freeze on his assets amid allegations that he defrauded an investor in a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting by inflating its price by about $6 million. Inigo Philbrick, 32, was accused in an Oct. 30 filing in London’s High Court of misleading Satfinance