We mentioned Bob Dylan's career as an artist a few years back but the musician's first ever show of his works on canvas will open on Saturday February 13 at the Halycon Gallery in London. The new work represents his artistic journey from the drawings in The Drawn Blank Series to works on paper and now finally to canvas. The Drawn Blank Series of drawings and sketches were also gathered into a book.

The paintings are based on drawings and sketches made while he was on the road during the period of 1989 - 1992. In a press release Dylan said of his own work, "I just draw what's interesting to me, and then I paint it" and says that he can find inspiration anywhwere. His work, which includes both landscapes and personal scenes, contains some of the same everyday poetry aspect that his songs also capture. The show will run through April 10.

[via ArtDaily]

When you think about corporate social responsibility – i.e., good corporate citizenship – the cigar industry probably isn't the first that comes to mind. The cigar business is small and only appeals to a handful of customers. Though I've been a cigar smoker for close to 15 years and was a consumer business strategist for a major consulting firm, I'd never thought about the possibility of corporate social responsibility in the cigar world – it jest never occurred to me.

While I was walking the Drew Estate factory in Esteli, Nicaragua, though, I began to hear the cues that signal an effort to be a valuable member of the community. The company – which produces the Acid and Java cigar lines, along with newer products such as the T9 and T52 – pays twice the region's prevailing wage for its positions. There are healthcare facilities on the premises. Wood for cigar boxes comes only from approved sources with environmentally friendly practices, and the company makes it a point to hire people with disabilities.

Jonathan Drew, one of the company's owners, spoke with me at length about Drew Estate's commitment to the surrounding community, which involves several measures intended to benefit not just the factory's employees but the people of Esteli.

While the holiday celebrations that involve the entire neighborhood, healthcare for employees and pregnancy leave are prominent aspects of Drew's informal philosophy of corporate social responsibility, I was struck by two rather unusual aspects: food and art.

All secrets eventually come out. At the recent London auctions, in which both Sotheby's and Christie's saw several lots set records, Russian collectors poured some money back into the art market, and Laurence Graff, chairman of Graff Diamonds, parted with a healthy dose of cash. It's this action that caused a combined tally of £258.9 million (including fees), more than double the result a year earlier.

The UK-based diamond dealer sunk £8.1 million into Pablo Picasso's "Tete de Femme (Jacqueline) at the Christie's auction, spending 100 percent more than the high-end presale estimate for the piece. According to Bloomberg News, Graff confirmed the acquisition by e-mail.

Russian billionaires got back into the game, as well, and they exercised better judgment than they did during the art boom, when prices for artists such as Damien Hirst were propelled to absurd levels.

The Impressionist sector has held on rather well, by comparison. "The market for Impressionist and modern art hasn't been as frothy and speculative as contemporary," said Guy Jennings, partner in the London-based dealership Theobald Jennings. "Last year, prices might have slipped five or 10 percent, but since then there's been some asset inflation. That might not be the case in six months' time if there's a double-dip recession."

There's a new show at the Eden Rock Gallery on St. Barths this month ... and it represents a bit of a departure from past exhibitions. Doubtless, some considerable talent has moved through the resort's art gallery, with names such as Richard Prince not to be taken lightly. And, the relationship with the New York Academy of Art has ensured that the artists in residence have been unmatched in talent.

The latest show is not short on talent and remains consistent with the reputation the Eden Rock Gallery has defined for itself, but the artist comes from a little closer to home. Jane Matthews will be showing her work in an exhibition entitled "Between Places and People," which features simple but direct subject matter in a fluid style slightly reminiscent of Gaugin (just a hint).

Jane owns Eden Rock with her husband, David Matthews, and it's their commitment to the arts that led to the gallery and the careful selection of pieces to hang in the property's various villas (such as Villa Rockstar).

With "Between Places and People," Jane proves that she doesn't just know how to pick art – she can create it, too. The photos alone caused me to fall in love with this show.

Author Michael Crichton wasn't just a prolific writer and the creator of "ER" he was also an avid art collector. Crichton, who died in 2008, had collected works from Picasso, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and others. Some of those works will be sold by Christie's in New York as part of their May auctions. The total value for the collection hasn't been given but just the haul from the big four listed above is supposed to top $32 million. One piece is one of John's famous flag paintings. Crichton was a Johns scholar, the two had met and this painting, "Flag" by Johns, dated 1960-66, was bought directly from the artist's collection and has never been on the public market.

Auctions that have a celebrity provenance have done well in the past few years even when the rest of the art market was in the doldrums. With the recent excitement of a new record set by a Giacometti sculpture, hopes are high for big results on this one. Reuters reports that the auction record for a Johns is $17.4 million set back in 2007 for his 1959 work "Figure 4," but that another piece, "False Start," sold for a reported $80 million in a private sale.

The art market's biggest question turned out to have a $200 million answer at Sotheby's on Wednesday night. Led by Alberto Giacometti's "L'Homme Qui Marche I," which an anonymous bidder picked up for more than $104 million, the auction house realized a total take of $235.7 million on 31 sold lots. Nobody expected this outcome, not even the most optimistic art market spectators, let alone a committed pessimist like me. Of course, my first instinct is to suggest that we wait for the contemporary art sales next week, but it's hard to deny that this week's outcome is both promising and exciting.

The Giacometti set a new record for the artist, sailing past the $27.5 million picked up by "Grand femme debout II" at a Christie's sale in May 2008. In driving nearly half the auction's sales, this piece made it clear that the art market comeback is more than the wishful thinking of collectors who have spent more than a year and a half watching their pieces lose value. A year from now, we'll be looking at "Homme" as the symbol of the art market's recovery, much as we've come to see that final $85 million Francis Bacon sale in May 2008 as the peak before the decline.

Eight lots failed to sell at the Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern evening sale, but this hardly matters when considered against the auction's overall performance. Presale expectations were beat by more than 100 percent, thanks in large part to the fact that 17 of the lots sold for more than £1 million each. Three lots crossed the £10 million threshold. Works by Georges Seurat, Paul Cezanne, Gustav Klimt and Camille Pissarro easily pushed into seven-figure territory.

Mayors of towns involved in sports conflicts often get into betting deals (usually involving food) but it's not so ordinary to have rival museum directors representing local pride. Art Daily reports that museum directors Maxwell L. Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and E. John Bullard, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director and CEO of the New Orleans Museum of Art have agreed to a Super Bowl wager. The pair began talking via Twitter and have decided that the losing town's museum will make a three-month loan of a significant work of art to the museum in the city whose NFL team wins the Super Bowl on February 7, 2010. Should the Indianapolis Colts win, the landscape painting "Ideal View of Tivoli", 1644, by French artist Claude Lorrain will head from New Orleans to Indianapolis. Should the New Orleans Saints be victorious, "The Fifth Plague of Egypt", 1800, a landscape by British artist J.M.W. Turner will spend a few months in new Orleans. The paintings were decided on after a Twitter war that took trash talking to a new eruidite level.

Wow, when I wrote about the upcoming auction of the Giacometti sculpture, L'Homme Qui Marche I, last month I had no idea that someone would go crazy for the bronze cast sculpture. But the results are crazy indeed. This sculpture, which was once part of the corporate collection of Germany's Dresdner Bank and acquired by Commerzbank when it took over Dresdner Bank last year, sold for an incredible £65,001,250 ($104,327,006) at the Sotheby's London Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale . It was only estimated at £12-18 million but it managed to set a world record as the most expensive piece of art ever to sell at auction breaking a record set way back in 2004 by Picasso's Garçon à la Pipe, 1905, which sold for $104.1 million.

The sale is good news for Commerzbank and selected German museums which will also benefit from the sale. The sculpture was executed in 1960 and cast in bronze in a numbered edition of 6 plus 4 artist's proofs. This one was cast in 1961 and is inscribed Alberto Giacometti and numbered 2/6 and with the foundry mark Susse Fondeur Paris. It seem Giacometti is in vogue lately. Last year his "L'Homme Qui Chavire" made the list of top pieces sold in 2009 in the ninth position with a price of $19.4 million.

Art Info reports that there was heated bidding both by phone and in person. While some thought the Giacometti might beat estimates no one imagined it would go for quite so much money. No information on the winning bidder has been revealed.

Liya Alfred by Brian Alfred

Christie's own New York gallery outpost Haunch of Venison is hosting a special benefit Monday night for The Time In Children's Arts Initiative, a HiArt! outreach program that is dedicated to bringing arts-inspired curriculum to at-risk schoolkids.

Galleries all over the city and individual artists have donated special works and experience packages to the auction to raise much needed funds, as schools across the city continue to cut their art budgets. Time In has spent the last year immersing Harlem kindergarteners and first graders in art, including gifting them with art supplies to sketch in HiArt! studios or in museums and galleries across the city. It's an inspiring new program that is set to grow exponentially with a little help from New York art patrons.

Sotheby's reached the high end of its presale estimate for its Important Old Master Paintings and Sculpture auction on Thursday. The sale was expected to generate between $38 million and $55 million, and the final result came in at $53.4 million. The top performer was "Jupiter and Antiope," a 1612 mythological scene by Hendrick Goltzius, though the $6.7 million winning bid failed to reach the low end of its presale estimate of $8 million to $12 million. The last high for this artist, though, was $1.5 million, set in 1996 when the art market was recovering following the burst of its early 1990s bubble.

Rembrandt's "Portrait of a Young Woman with a Black Hat" was also estimated at $8 million to $12 million, but the painting never made it under the gavel. The piece was withdrawn at the seller's request, Sotheby's told ArtInfo. He'd picked up the piece at a Sotheby's New York auction in January 2007 for $9 million, paying much more than the $3 million to $4 million estimate.

This delicate little piggy bank vase is unexpectedly attractive considering it's meant to represent the ushering in of digital currency and the extinction of physical money, paused at the exact moment the hammer hits the piggy. I suspect in this recession some will also be inspired to see it as representative of the need to break into savings to survive. The Killing of a Piggy Bank is the result of a collaboration between Marcel Wanders and Royal Delft for Moooi, and is the latest addition to the Delft Blue Collection of porcelain vases. $1,288

It looks like Christie's agrees with me (or, I agree with Christie's): the art market is going to recover this year. The auction house, which is bringing some powerful inventory under the gavel at its contemporary art sale next month, expects the market to recover this year. With the improvement in conditions, price guarantees may return, as well.

In 2009, Christie's states, sales fell to 2.1 billion pounds, a decline of 24%. For the contemporary category, which was hit worst by the art market slump, sales dropped 59% to 244.3 million pounds -- in 2007, it only took a handful of pieces to get up to this amount.

According to Edward Dolman, chief executive of Christie's, "These figures were much better than we expected." He observed to Bloomberg News, "The art market is vulnerable and we thought we'd be down 50 percent, as we were in the last recession in 1991." Christie's, along with the other major house, Sotheby's, were able to compensate for weakness in contemporary art with sales of Old Masters, wine and jewelry. Also, performance in Asia contributed to the salvaging of 2009, where average selling rates by lot gained 5% to 80% in 2009.

The Old Masters group gained 1% last year, one of only four categories to show an up-tick in 2009. The best performer, however, was the 20th Century Decorative Arts category, which posted a 149% increase, helped along by the 21.9 million euros paid for an Eileen Gray chair at the record-setting Yves Saint Laurent sale.

Can a play about accounting really deliver? Well, according to a review in Bloomberg News, "Enron" really adds up. Close to a decade after the company that was once #7 on the Fortune 500 list collapsed, bringing accounting firm Arthur Andersen with it, Lucy Prebble has brought it to the stage in London, now at the Neal Coward Theatre. Singing, dancing and slapstick are mixed with a healthy dose of realism to guide the audience through rise and fall of Enron.

Dinosaurs and light sabers are brought into the action to illustrate the work of then financial wizard Andrew Fastow (played by Tom Goodman-Hill), whose off-balance sheet companies, called "raptors," came to life as named and a project called "Death Star" led to the crossing of weapons a la Jedis.

The performances are said to have become profound, with Samuel West's Jeffrey Skilling showing the horror of the fall and Amanda Drew's Claudia Roe (fictional) adding a human touch as the character who represents the opponents Skilling pushed out of his way.

It's been a while since Enron dominated the headlines, and we've since had the mortgage-precipitated financial crisis to remind us of the power of greed. But, Enron kicked off the new millennium, a single company that destroyed vast amounts of value ... and now it's all set to song.

All of Los Angeles wants to know where billionaire Eli Broad and his Broad Art Foundation will land. Ever since Broad decided in 2008 that he wouldn't be installing his 2,000 work contemporary art collection at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, the question of where he would establish his own museum has been up in the air. First it seemed that he might head to Beverly Hills or Santa Monica but the latest info from the LA Times seems to indicate the potential for a downtown move.

Broad's museum could end up as part of the ambitious, Frank Gehry-designed Grand Avenue project. Broad has long been a supporter of the development which would revitalize the heart of downtown's arts district with hotels, condos and retail space. Until recently Broad was a member of the committee overseeing the project on behalf of the Grand Avenue Authority but he resigned a few months ago, clearing the way for his transition into being a possible part of the project. The Grand Avenue Authority has said they will be considering a proposal from the Broad Foundation. As the LA Times points out, the project has stalled out in the face of the economic decline when the developer was unable to get a multibillion-dollar construction loan. If Broad chooses to put his museum here it will be in good company, Disney Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art and other cultural venues are located nearby. Broad, who is 76, is likely mindful of the story of another famous art collector, the late Donald Fisher who recently died without having secured plans for his museum. Broad isn't going anywhere but this museum is his legacy to the city of Los Angeles and I'm sure he is eager that it find a good home soon.

While at the Geneva Time Exhibition 2010 recently I got to meet with one of my modern watch making heroes, Yvan Arpa. I have discussed his exploits during his time at Romain Jerome, and his new project is Artya. In addition, he will be designing a line of watches for Volna. Artya is interesting concept that could only come from a mind like Arpa's. An artist himself, he sees a large niche for watches made by talented people who consider themselves artists above only watch makers. Arpa is also interested in exclusivity. For that reason, each and every Artya watch will be totally unique - as well as relatively affordable. In a time when a totally unique watch costs over $100,000, how is it possible that Artya watches will mostly cost under $10,000?

It has to do with Arpa's vision for how the watches are made. Instead of making totally unique cases in the manufacturing process, Artya creates unique cases more organically. The workshop's process involves a tesla coil. Making artificial lightning that "tortures" the watches. The result is mostly cases that are too destroyed, but in the experimentation comes pieces that are interesting in style and suitable for the necessary level of water resistance.