Top 10 Most Expensive Paintings

10. Vincent Van Gogh - "Portrait de 'artiste sans barbe", 1889
Price paid: $90.7 Million



9. Gustav Klimt - "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Baur II", 1912
Price paid: $93.1 Million



8. Pablo Picasso - "Dora Maar au Chat", 1941
Price paid: $100.8 Million

7. Vincent Van Gogh - "Irises", 1889
Price Paid: $102.3 Million

6. Pablo Picasso - "Garcon a la pipe", 1905
Price paid: $114.8 Million



5. Pierre-Auguste Renoir - "Bal au Moulin de la Galette, Montmarte", 1876
Price paid: $128.8 Million



4. Vincent Van Gogh - "Portrait of Dr. Gachet", 1890
Price paid: $136.1 million

3. Gustav Klimt - "Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer I", 1907
Price paid: $143.5 Million

2. Williem do Kooning - "Woman III", 1953
Price paid: $145.7 Million

1. Jackson Pollock - "No. 5, 1948", 1948
Price paid: $147.8 Million

Recession hits Art Market

The world wide art market is being hard hit by the American recession and global economic slowdown. How? Artworks at auction are going unsold.

Where just a year ago we were seeing record prices for Andy Warhol's and Vincent Van Gogh's, now paintings and sculptures are sitting on the auction block with no bids whatsoever.

The Canadian art auction market for example celebrated 12 years of growth, eclipsing $71 million in sales over 2007-2008, its largest ever.

At the end of 2008 however the money has dried up. The collapse of the housing sector, the financial markets, the automotive sector and other industries has caused investors to grip their money more firmly. Invest in art? Ha!

In London and New York, fall auctions have severely underperformed, leaving major works unsold or greatly underpriced that American collector Eli Broad even jokingly called it a "half-price sale."

At the modern and impressionist art auctions in New York on November 3rd and 4th works from Monet, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Warhol and Rothko, were left unsold. Sotheby's had estimated a low of $338 million (U.S.) in sales, but had only $223.8 million.

So what does this mean for living artists and private art galleries? Well if the art investors are tightening their belts, it suggests that regular art buyers will do the same too and art sales will plummet. We can expect to see quite a few privately owned art galleries lose their collective shirts and close.

Its hard enough for art galleries to survive as is. Its not exactly a business known for profits.

Jackson Pollock for sale in Toronto

Abstract Expressionism - It was a thrift-shop find for $5 and now it's being put up for sale in Toronto with a price tag of $50 million.

A painting by Jackson Pollock will be on display this month at a small, east-end gallery, with its American owner, Teri Horton, seeking a Canadian buyer.

The retired trucker, who found the painting some 15 years ago in San Bernardino, California, says she's been so badly treated by the U.S. art market - which has refused to acknowledge its forensic authentication (Jackson Pollock's fingerprints in the paint) - that she wants a Canadian to buy the colourful abstract canvas.

"For a long time I'd been wanting this painting out of the U.S.A. because they don't deserve the painting," Horton said Tuesday.

"This is the 21st century - the century of science.... They don't want science into art authentication because it's going to expose all the corruption within the U.S.A. art market."

Horton has entrusted the Pollock painting, measuring 1.7-by-1.2 metres and featuring navy, off-white, black, red and yellow paint, to Gallery Delisle in eastern Toronto.

Owner Michelle Delisle says she reached out to Horton after seeing the documentary, "Who the $%& is Jackson Pollock?" in which the gravel-voiced Horton discovers she may have a masterwork on her hands, but comes up against an established art market that refuses to acknowledge evidence provided by a Montreal forensic expert.

Believing the painting to be a real Pollock, Delisle contacted Horton last month and now the painting will be on display at the gallery for two weeks beginning Nov. 13, with private viewings available by appointment from Nov. 1.

"The person that buys this painting is laughing after this because as soon as it's purchased it'll be validated," said Delisle.

"A painting's value is the last price paid, so if this person was to then turn around five years later and bring it to Christie's or Sotheby's (they could do well). The last Pollock that came up to market went for $140 million...and this is a little bit smaller but not a lot. A $50-million price tag is very fair. It's very fair."

Horton says she's had offers to buy the painting in the past, but at $2 million and $9 million bids, they fell far below what she feels it's worth. Bidders with even higher offers were ultimately scared off by New York art advisers who consistently counseled against the purchase, she adds.

Canadian art observers doubt Horton will get her price in Canada, given that serious collectors in Canada tend to favour homegrown artists and that few have the bankroll to meet the steep asking price.

Tory government scraps Portrait Gallery

CANADA - After seven years of planning and several million dollars of public investment, the Conservative government has scrapped a project to open a national portrait gallery, Heritage Minister James Moore said late Friday.

"In this time of global economic instability, it is important that the federal government continue to manage its own affairs prudently and pragmatically," he said in a press release.

Moore, who was appointed to the Heritage Ministry last month, also blamed the cancellation on a dearth of feasible submissions made by developers.

(Right and Below: Portraits by Canadian artist Charles Moffat)

"A number of developers submitted proposals to house the public programming and exhibitions of the Portrait Gallery of Canada," he said.

"Unfortunately, none of these proposals met the government's requirements, and we are therefore terminating the selection process."

The cancellation comes a day after Moore, 32, told reporters that he hoped to "build bridges" with the arts community in his new posting.

Relations with Canada's arts groups were strained after the Harper government announced $45 million in culture cuts earlier this year.

In 2001, the Liberal government announced it would open the Portrait Gallery of Canada by 2005, however, the project has hit several snags.

Initially, the gallery - which was to feature 20,000 paintings and prints along with millions of photos and other examples of Canadian art history - was to open in the former American embassy, which sits across from Parliament in Ottawa.

In fact, the government has already spent more than $10 million in repairing that building in preparation for the gallery.

The entire projected cost was initially $22 million, but that number later swelled to $45 million, and the opening was pushed back to 2007.

Meanwhile, the Conservative government reviewed the project after it came into power in 2006.

A year ago, the Conservatives announced that several major Canadian cities should bid for the gallery - a move which was slammed by critics who wanted the gallery in Ottawa.

After last May's deadline for submissions, three cities were in the running: Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa.

Alberta's government had even promised to pump $40 in provincial cash into a bid.

The government, meanwhile, stated that the portrait collection, which is stored in special facility in Gatineau, Que., "will continue to be available for viewing by Canadians through travelling exhibitions and other public programs."

Artists Remember the names of Canada's Fallen

ART HISTORY - When the sun sets over the British capital tomorrow night, an ambitious act of remembrance begins when the first name is projected against the walls of Canada House in Trafalgar Square. One after another, the names of each Canadian to fall in World War I will follow.

As the sun moves westward to Canada, the names will go with it, projected against buildings in six cities, including Toronto City Hall. The sequence continues with 9,700 names per night spread across 13-hour, sunset-to-sunrise vigils until the last name appears at the break of dawn on Nov. 11.

Three years in the making, Vigil: 1914-1918 is the brainchild of Canadian actor/director R.H. Thomson and his co-creator, lighting designer Martin Conboy, a labour of deep respect that has taken on a life of its own.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, moved by the poignancy of the idea, now have confirmed their attendance at tomorrow's London launch. Public vigils are also to take place in Fredericton, Halifax, Regina and Edmonton, besides the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

As an aid to remembrance, a searchable website has been created – www.1914-1918.ca – to enable the families of Canada's war dead to mark the precise moment of their ancestor's turn in the passage of names, 90 years after the devastating war was brought to an end.

"This was the war that cost Europe its reputation as civilized. The war where Canadian families were forbidden from repatriating the bodies of their war dead, however much they wanted to," Thomson told the Star.

"So what we want to say to people is, `Watch. Watch these names move. This is the final march. The final roll.' "

For Thomson, it is personal. He lost seven great-uncles to war, including four of five brothers who fought with the Canadian Expeditionary Force under British and Allied command in WWI. That toll formed the basis for Thomson's 2001 solo show, The Lost Boys.

Growing up in the shadows of such loss, Thomson says he has always been mindful of the "unearthed stories in the attics of so many Canadian families."

Thomson knew his own stories: how two of the brothers fell in the battlefields of Europe and how two more made it home, only to die in a sanatorium from the effects of gas poisoning. And how the fifth brother – "Uncle Art"– wandered through a subsequent life of adventure, from Africa to Egypt to northern Ontario, occasionally showing up at Christmas to teach his great-nephew how to play poker.

For a span of three years, Thomson and his collaborator Conboy have been amassing stories from other Canadian families to better understand what Thomson calls "the enduring slipstream of war."

"As artists, we are trying to present Vigil as a piece of social history. To say directly to Canadian families that we understand that when there is war it doesn't just stop at a certain date. There is this turbulence that goes on for generations," said Thomson.

"I spoke to hundreds of families, hearing stories of men screaming in their beds in the middle of the night, still fighting the war for years after the fact.

"I spoke to a man in his 90s who broke down and cried to me on the phone – cried to a complete stranger– as he told of his father's war. Another man told me that every time his father swore, he spoke out his service number from the war."

Thomson recognizes that where art intersects with remembrance the terrain can sometimes be tricky. At tomorrow's ceremony in London, for example, the Queen will meet a number of Canadian veterans, including some recently returned from Afghanistan.

"What we are doing is not anti-war statement nor a pro-war statement. For me, I have no difficulty thinking about these things in dimension; one can look skeptically at military action as a means of diplomacy and at the same time have complete and total respect for the men and women who are actually there," he said.

"I'm doing this more as a Canadian, rather than as an artist," says Thomson.

"What really struck us in preparing for this is how many families hold the last pieces of this war in their memories. But the memory is fading as people near the ends of their lives.

"So what happens after that? What happens in that moment in our country's history when the memory fades forever? My response would be: mark it. Do something unique, so that you will always remember that moment when it evaporated."

Rotting Onions = Art

ART HISTORY - One man's stink is another man's major art project.

A piece by Belgian conceptual artist Jan Fabre at the Antwerp's Muhka contemporary art museum is challenging the nose as well as the eyes.

The installation "Spring is on its way" consists of onions and potatoes hung from the ceiling in condoms. And the vegetables are, well, spoiling.

"Like many of his works, it is about transformation and metamorphosis," Muhka's Kathleen Weyts said of Fabre, who had a solo show at the Paris Louvre earlier this year.

Weyts claimed that one museum worker complained. Local media reported that plenty of visitors and museum guards were protesting. By Monday, the smelly, rotting onions and potatoes were the talk of the town.

"Protest Against Fabre's Stink Art," headlined Het Nieuwsblad newspaper.

"Fabre's stinking work raises tempers," the VRT television network said on its website.

Some shoots have broken through the condoms and other condoms have crashed to the ground from the weight of the vegetables.

"It smells of onions but I would not call it a stink," Muhka director Bart De Baere told VRT.

The museum has no plans to remove Fabre's installation, which runs until the start of spring 2009, but it is removing any vegetables that hit the ground.

Eight years ago, Fabre covered some university pillars in Ghent in ham. Sure enough, after a while, the complaints came.

"Fabre always says that art must be a bit smelly," said Weyts.