Art

Basquiat Sells, Hirst Pig Tempts at $2.7 Billion Fair (Update1) A work by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold today within the first two hours of the official opening of the world’s largest art and antiques fair in the Dutch city of Maastricht. Other pieces by Damien Hirst, Alberto Giacometti and Paul Gauguin attracted interest from billionaires who took time browsing Tefaf, the 23rd annual European Fine Art Fair.

Nazi-Looted Corot Painting to Be Sold by Sotheby’s (Update1) Sotheby’s will offer a painting by the French artist Jean Baptiste Camille Corot in an auction of 19th-century art after a Dutch museum returned the work to the heirs of a Jewish banker persecuted by the Nazis.

How Leibovitz Found New Partner for $24 Million Debt, Archive Late last summer, Richard Nanula, a principal at private-equity firm Colony Capital LLC, met celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz in New York as she was struggling to repay a $24 million loan.

Gordon Gekko’s Favorite Handgun May Fetch $1 Million at Auction A rare .45-caliber 1907 Luger handgun, once bought for $150, may sell for as much as $1 million at a March 14 auction in Anaheim, California.

See Nicole Kidman Sulk, Hear Chopin Play: Great London Weekend Steal a glimpse of a sulking Nicole Kidman as the Friday stop on your weekend in London.

S&P Raises Sotheby’s Outlook to Positive, Junk Rating Unchanged Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services raised its outlook on Sotheby’s debt to positive from negative after the New York auctioneer reported a fourth-quarter profit of $73.6 million.

$2.7 Billion Dutch Fair Lures Collectors as Confidence Rises A record 263 dealers will offer paintings and other works worth $2.7 billion at the world’s largest art and antiques fair, anticipating the return of the billionaire big-spenders.

BAT Makes $18.5 Million in Sotheby’s Biggest Dutch Art Sale British American Tobacco Plc, Europe’s second-largest cigarette maker, made 13.6 million euros ($18.5 million) last night in what Sotheby’s said was the highest total for an art auction in the Netherlands.