Enfilade

‘Classic Art’ and ‘Revolution’ are the latest labels chosen to make Old Master paintings more appealing to collectors of contemporary art. From The NY Times:

Scott Reyburn, “A New Battleground for ‘Classic Art’,” The New York Times (30 October 2015).

. . . Last month, Christie’s jolted the auction calendar by announcing that it would be introducing a new themed week devoted to auctions of historic artworks in New York in April. Instead of holding its old master paintings sales in January in the same week as Sotheby’s, Christie’s will offer them three months later, at the same time that it previews highlights of its May Impressionist, modern and contemporary auctions.

Traditionally, for the convenience of dealers and collectors, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the two rival auction houses, have held their most important sales in the same week. . . .

[But] Christie’s is now going its own way with old masters, or what it now re-brands as “classic art.”

“There’s a sense that classical paintings aren’t fashionable,” said Jussi Pylkkanen, global president of Christie’s International. “But we’ve been selling them at the wrong time of year, when we haven’t been able to show them to our buyers of 20th-century art.” . . .

This shake-up of the New York auction calendar is the latest attempt—the Frieze Masters fair in London is another—to re-energize demand for historic works by exposing them to the wealthy collectors of 20th- and 21st-century art who dominate the buying. With that audience in mind, the April 2016 “Classic Art Week” will be given a modernist edge with a new themed “Revolution” sale comprising stand-out works from the 18th to 20th centuries, including photographs. . . .

Christie’s press release (6 October 2015) for the “Revolution” sale (New York, #11932, 13 April 2016) is available here»