Regia Marinho

"Walking Man" by Alberto Giacometti.

The sculpture was in the collection of Dresdner Bank AG. Brazilian London-based billionaire Lily Safra is the buyer of the Alberto Giacometti sculpture that fetched a record 65 million pounds (then $103.4 million) at an auction in London on Feb. 3, 2010 Source: Sotheby's via Bloomberg


Lily Safra, the daughter of Czech father who migrated to Brazil in the early twentieth century, was born in Canoas, Rio Grande do Sul.

Lily Watkins Cohen Monteverde Bendahan Safra (Lily Watkins of birth) is a wealthy philanthropist. She has acquired, after three marriages, a considerable fortune, which makes it the 620 ° richest person in the world, according to Forbes in 2005.

Widow of billionaire banker Edmond Safra is a philanthropist and socialite in New York and London, with homes in Geneva and Monaco.

Sotheby’s failed to sell its top Picasso and Giacometti at its NY Modern art auction.
And just 1 night later Christie’s sold Picasso's "Mousquetaire a la pipe" to a bidder in the room for $14.6 million. Christie's had sold the same work 5 years ago for $7.2 million.
At Christie's auction 42 percent of the buyers were from the United States and 44.7 percent were European, a group that includes Russians.

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regiaart.com

Castlestone Management’s recently announced that an art fund that will be open to investors with as little as $10,000 to allocate toward art as an asset class.

Angus Murray, Castlestone’s managing principal. Art, for Mr. Murray, is another real asset, one that has been under-utilized by finance professionals.

Murray will seek to create a diversified collection of museum-quality modern art from a variety of genres, including: impressionist, post-war, contemporary, sculpture, urban art and photography.

The interview Angus Murray did with Bloomberg UK last Friday is below minus the opening section dealing with oil and commodities prices

Interview with Angus Murray

John Dawson I’m now joined by Angus Murray, the founder of Castlestone Management which now has $700m in assets. Angus joining the managers, the Aliquot Active Commodity Index Fund. [ . . . ]

John Dawson Don’t go away Angus, because contemporary art prices have slumped by half over the past six months. Wealthy buyers are drying up as even the rich and super-rich feel the pinch of this credit crunch. Castlestone Management is looking to capitalise on that and is setting up a fund to snap up art bargains from Banksy to Damien Hurst. The goal is to hold investments over a longer timeframe, in this case eight years. The fund will launch at the end of May and has raised so far $25m, that’s so far. Now back to the man behind that, of course, Angus Murray, again a busy man of course, you’ve got commodities in one hand and art in the other hand. What do you prefer, Angus, where’s your heart?

Angus Murray Yeah, but they’re both real assets. They’re the both the same underlying actual asset. Art is an irreplaceable, unleveraged real asset, gold is an unleveraged real asset. They’re both rising because the value of money, or they both will rise because the value of money is going to fall. You can’t pump this much money into the economies as we have done, not only recently but in the last 20 years, and not have the value of money depreciate. So art, like most other asset classes, has declined, you said by about 50%, we would have thought by 30-34% or thereabouts.

John Dawson Up to 50%.

Angus Murray Yeah, okay, up to 50%, that would be fair. Particularly in contemporary art, perhaps post-war
and impressionist not the same degree. We hope to complement the financial skills that Castlestone Management has on risk management and asset management with those of hiring people in the art world that really understand art in detail. If we then combined art as an asset class, hold it over a long period of time, it should perform in line with all other real assets.

John Dawson People often read the papers, etc, and art is the next bubble to burst because some of these
paintings, for example, are being sold for exorbitant prices. Is that a fair thing to say? Because some of these, it really is so high in this credit crunch, it doesn’t seem realistic for it to last any longer.

Angus Murray Well let’s assume that it’s already come down, contemporary maybe by 50%, impressionist by
30%, that’s a pretty big break already.

John Dawson Sure.

Angus Murray In line with say developed equity markets around the world, emerging markets crashed a little
bit further than that, commodities came down a little fast and maybe because of the dollar’s appreciation which pushed commodities even down further. So I would indicate that like gold having come from $1,000 an ounce to $700 and then bouncing, art has probably done or is doing the same type of thing. It will just take maybe the next six to twelve months to see those prices begin to rise. But nearly every other major asset class has now shifted up by 30%, and art has yet to do that. So it’s probably an asset class that is trailing behind the economics of expectation which we get factored into equities, and art will begin to do that over the next six to twelve months.

John Dawson So you launch this fund end of May, minimum investment starts at $10,000 or £10,000, which one is it?

Angus Murray It depends on which currency you’re investing in.

John Dawson That’s a bit unfair on the pound isn’t it?

Angus Murray But it’s about the same. It’s about the same these days. We started the fund …

John Dawson What’s the return projection that you have?

Angus Murray If the world has been printing money since the 1970s at about 7% per annum, I’d say 7% per annum, it’s just a real asset. We actually started the fund itself back in November 2007 and have since then purchased, and will purchase US$25m worth of art. I couldn’t ask you to put in £10,000 and, which you’d have to do through a professional financial adviser.

John Dawson You could, but I wouldn’t have it to give you to you!

Angus Murray You would need to, when the money comes in you would need to have an already fully diversified art portfolio. So we had to start a fund with a fully diversified portfolio already, hence why the requirement was to start with $25m of art, which will be May 31st, so that if you do decide to invest you have a diversified portfolio.

John Dawson How much attraction have you had from clients, new clients?

Angus Murray There’s been a lot of what I would say interest. Some of it I’m sure is very sincere.

John Dawson Interest or, okay, right, go on.

Angus Murray Some of it I think is sincere, people who genuinely understand and believe in the asset class,
some of the people will probably be it’s more about novelty and general interest. What we’re trying to do though is to buy an hold the art. I believe it would be statistically improbable that I could buy and sell art given how much it costs to buy and sell it, and beat an index, a little bit like an ETF almost always beats and actively managed manager because of the cost of trading and human error, so we really want to buy the asset, hold it over eight years and then sell the asset very well. Therefore it should as a real asset outperform.

John Dawson Thank you very much indeed. Good luck with the fund.

Angus Murray Thank you.

John Dawson Launching a fund in this market is always quite hard but good luck with that. Angus Murray there, from Castlestone Management.

New York dealer Christophe Van de Weghe had a thrilling start to his Maastricht debut after London jewelry magnate Laurence Graff, who also had a booth here, bought Jean-Michel Basquiat's Untitled (The Black Athlete) from 1982 for $4.5 million. [from artinfo]

Tefaf is one of the most influential of art and antiques fairs and this attracts collectors and museum curators from around the globe.  
You still have time to go...
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http://regiaart.com

Article by Erin Roll of Glen Ridge Voice about artist Regia Marinho.

"The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but the more interesting and fulfilling distance is usually a squiggly line. Just ask local artist Regia Marinho."

"Some of her drawings contain fine lines and tiny details. Other times she uses broad, forceful, and angry-looking brushstrokes. Some pieces are full of color, while others have colorful dots placed here and there..."

click on the image to read the full article.

More about RegiaArt here http://regiaart.com
...interested in joining me on Facebook, my FB profile is here: http://tinyurl.com/db2ry6
and here http://tinyurl.com/bmho3t Thanks. :-)

 Regia Marinho drawing.

Peter Garrett Australian Arts Minister.

Established by the federal government in 1980, Artbank has grown into one of the nation's largest collections of contemporary Australian art. It rents to private, corporate and public bodies for a fraction of the purchase price.

It's the government art rental service.

At the Australian Artbank about 300 works are added to the collection each year and more than 70 per cent of the collection is rented out at any one time.


...buying a wide range of works from every state and territory. The average purchase price for new acquisitions is $3155.

"We see ourselves as supporting not just the artists but the art market as well. It's about keeping the whole system strong," Cassidy director of Artbank says.

Artbank ready to lend a hand [link]

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regiaart.com 

An article on Baristanet.com about artist Regia Marinho
Say hello on twitter @regiaart
http://regiaart.com

The end of the boom is only bad news for the con artists, said Jonathan Jones. [read more]

You know, business is actually pretty slow right now. But, I welcome that challenge.
And also I welcome your suggestions on how to overcome this slump. email me.

by regiaart.com

What color most improves brain performance and creativity?
Choose what it's right to you.

RED:
Red boosted performance on detail-oriented tasks such as memory retrieval and proofreading by as much as 31 per cent compared to blue.
Many newsroom walls at The New York Times are bright tomato-soup red. The newspaper’s facilities department says there are no blue rooms in the place. [from NYTimes]
Red can make people’s work more accurate.

BLUE:
For a Creativity boost, go hang out in a blue room.
Blue room is also for a brainstorming session for a new product or coming up with a new solution for something...

Blue wall with blue painting is a winner!


red and the blue paintings above by R Marinho from regiaart.com

Read more about this new University of British Columbia colors study here and here.

****
Regia Marinho
That line that never ends__________________________ ...
Artist, engineer
regiaart@gmail.com

Photo By Courtesy Photo Ralph Lauren

Established menswear designers are going back to their roots this season.
Yet Ralph Lauren's vision has always remained consistent. And for fall, that means:

* The return of the three-piece suit;
* Monochromatic looks across furnishings and tailoring;
* A sharper silhouette, with a new rolled shoulder.
[from portfolio.com]

And a Regia Art Show video about another season, two years ago.



regiaart.com

John Madejski is Britain’s 214th richest person, with a confirmed worth of 400 million pounds ($570 million). In addition to cars, Bentley, Ferrari, Rolls Royce and Jaguar, and personal number plates, John Madejski is well known for his interest in art.

Madejski now wants to downsize, if the price is right.


His Degas sculpture is expected to fetch between 9 million pounds and 12 million pounds at today’s Sotheby’s sale in London, the auction house said. [from bloomberg]

He bought the Edgar Degas sculpture La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans in 2004.
The purchase was made at Sotheby's and cost him more than £5m.
Madejski promptly loaned the bronze to the Royal Academy for display in the Fine Rooms at Burlington House.

Joseph Mallord William Turner's "The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius," painted 1814-16.

The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius Restored made a very high price today at Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings sale.
Richard Feigen the art dealer got $11.5 million for himself (he had paid £648,000 in 1982) and Sotheby’s took the rest of the $12.9 million premium price. [from bloomberg]

I can't believe people still have this kind of money to buy just ONE painting.
Is it not too much for these days?

What about the living artists?
You rich art buyer can find tons of wonderful artworks for $13 Million. Just go online buy what you love and feel good about it.
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How can great museums cope with hard times? By pulling great work out of the attic.
Art critic Jerry Salz wants MoMA to use the recession as an opportunity to show more art.
And change the way we look at modernity and its after effects.

MoMA inarguably possesses the greatest collection of modern art in the world. It is our Garden of Eden, the place we go to visit the ancestors. Yet after spending three-quarters of a billion dollars in 2004 for its spiffy new building MoMA inexplicably, maybe unforgivably, failed to provide enough room to let that collection soar, or even to tell the whole wild story of modernism. And, a few years later, some say that garden—our garden—is wilting, even that its dying. Since it is unlikely that MoMA will take this open moment to present art history as the tremendous spaghetti-like mix that it really is, staying wedded to its diagrammatic Old Testament version of modern art that runs from Cubism to Surrealism, the museum could think about shaking up the fourth floor. MoMA could dismantle the entire space and hang only Postminimal art or Abstract Expressionism for a year. Something. Anything to inject life into the ossifying body. [from nymag.com]

How can great artists cope with hard times?
By pulling great work out of the attic and sell on eBay. And use twitter, and youtube, and blog, and website and ...


What else are you doing?

François Pinault’s new contemporary art museum at the Dogana in Venice will be inaugurated on June 6.
The museum will open with half of a the French billionaire’s personal collection.
The new space in the old customs post will open with half of a two-venue exhibition drawn from Pinault’s personal collection and featuring works that present “a dialogue between artists of different generations” and “a multitude of artistic expressions and sensibilities.”
The show's second venue is the Palazzo Grassi, Pinault’s other Venice museum. [from afp.com]

Young designer Jason Wu was the designer of Michelle Obama's white inaugural gown, a white chiffon, one-shoulder gown covered in fluffy appliques and beading.
Isabel Toledo designed inauguration outfit Michelle Obama wore earlier.
Jason Wu was born in Taiwan.
Isabel Toledo was born in Cuba. 
Both attended Parsons in New York.
President Obama wore a white bow tie with his tuxedo.
Mrs. Obama also wore diamond drop earrings and a diamond cuff bracelet to match the sparkle of the beaded gown.
Getty Images. [more on luxist]

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