ed ruscha

From the Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles poster artist Robbie Conal and his wife, movie and television title designer Deborah Ross, have listed their Gregory Ain-designed home in Mar Vista for $1.149 million. The home is in a development of 52 so-called "Modernique Homes." The pair added bamboo floors, a new kitchen and an art studio.

--Artist Ed Ruscha has sold his Point Dume-area home in Malibu for $4 million.
--The Studio City home of the late model agent Nina Blanchard has sold for $1.1 million.
--The late Nancy M. Daly's former Malibu home, which recently sold for more than $40 million, has been leased out for $200,000 a month by the new owner.
--Singer-songwriter Graham Nash and his wife, Susan, have sold their longtime Encino home for its asking price of $1.6 million.
--A Bel-Air compound owned by the late real estate broker Jon Douglas has come on the market at $18.7 million. The listing is here.

From the NY Post:
--Julia Roberts has purchased a penthouse co-op at 45 W. 10th St. for $3.895 million.
--Technology investor Peter Thiel, a Facebook billionaire and PayPal co-founder, is renting a three-bedroom apartment at 15 Union Square West.
--Gerard Butler recently checked out a $7.995 million townhouse condo at 385 W. 12th St.
--Ad man Alan Levenstein, former vice chairman at Bozell Worldwide, and his wife, Gail, who ran the private-client division at Bill Blass for many years, have put their 2,200-square-foot, second-floor co-op at 75 Central Park West on the market for $4.25 million.The listing is here.

From the Wall Street Journal:
The Boca Raton, Florida home of former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski has had a price cut to $19.5 million. The 1.6-acre waterfront compound is composed of five adjacent lots and has more than 600 feet of waterfront. It was listed at $24.5 million when we checked it out last year. His former North Hampton, New Hampshire home will be up for auction on November 9 and is our estate of the day tomorrow.

A three-story home on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill is for sale for $12.9 million. The home's current owner is Sandra Lloyd-Smith, ex-wife of the late Texas oil tycoon Robert Mosbacher. The listing is here.

From the NY Times:
--Many of New York City's ultrarich are choosing to rent rather than buy, spending between $10,000 and $100,000 a month.
--Walter Cronkite's summer home on Martha's Vineyard has gone to contract. It had an asking price of $12.25 million.

From the NY Observer:
--George Robb, Jr., the founder of the RPM Nautical Foundation, who until last year was married to model Veronica Webb, has picked up an apartment at 15 Broad Street for $2.785 million.
--John Eck, the president of NBC TV, and his wife Malia have just bought a condo at 43 Clarkson Street in the Far West Village for $3.675 million.
--Zachary Kestenbaum runs who, with his father, runs Building Link, a digital management system for residential properties, has bought a $4 million coop at 1095 Park Avenue.
--Edwin C. Cohen, son of Nixon Treasury Secretary Edwin S. Cohen, has sold his his Central Park West coop for $9.75 million. He bought the home for $11 million in 2006.
--Leonard Stern has paid $14.25 million for a Soho penthouse at 495 West Broadway.
-- Dickson Chu, who is in charge of development and products for Citi, and wife Kristin have paid $2.7 million for a unit at Extell's Aerial West at 245 West 99th Street.
--Writer Vicky Ward and publisher Matthew Doull have sold their Bleecker Street townhouse for $6 million.
--Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown and her pundit husband Dan Senor have moved into The Hastings at 71 Murray Street buying a loft for $4.495 million.
--Judith Greenberg Seinfeld who used to work in perfume and is now a real estate maven picked up a unit at 27 West 67th Street for $4.7 million.
--Bruce and Marlo Wrobel have sold their four-story home at 150 Lincoln Place to Roopal Luhana and Birbal Kaikini for the asking price of $3.195 million.
--Roger A. Enrico, former CEO of PepsiCo. and current Dreamworks Animation chairman has purchased a three-bedroom at 37 West 12th Street at the Butterfield House for $3.14 million.

Celebrate if you own an Ed Ruscha print. At a Bohnams and Butterfield's auction last week, excited bidders pushed Standard Station (E.5) past its high estimate of $40,000 ... all the way to $170,000 and a new record for Ed Ruscha's work. The previous top spot for Ruscha was $133,000 for Hollywood, which was attained during the art boom in 2007.

The record-setting piece features a red gas station, an image now associated with Ruscha, and is #33 in an edition of 50 (a pretty large run). The strong auction performance follows an enormous retrospective held for the artist at London's Hayward Gallery and recognition by Americans for the Arts with its Artistic Excellence Award.

But, there's no prize so grand as an outstanding performance at auction.

The Obama family is definitely leaning modern, with Rothko, Degas and Diebenkorn among the artists represented. They've also included a word painting by Ed Ruscha. Not wanting to deprive the public of the opportunity to view works on display, the Obamas limited their choices to artwork in museum storage.

There's now a lot of money hanging from those White House walls. "Red Band" by Rothko, "Berkeley No. 52" by Diebenkorn and "White Line" by Sam Francis together are estimated to be worth between $20 million and $30 million. Throw a piece by Jasper Johns into the mix – specifically "Numerals, 0 through 9" – and you get a sense of the collection the Obamas have assembled.

Even with access to a collection of that caliber, though, I'd still never take Obama's job. And, there aren't enough Rothkos out there to change my mind.

A group of 13 highly covetable artists including John Baldessari, Frank Gehry, Ed Ruscha, Jasper Johns and Richard Serra have donated print editions of their work to raise funds for Presidential candidate Barack Obama. Los Angeles-based print publisher Gemini G.E.L. commissioned the group of artists to create what they're calling the "Artists for Obama" portfolio, a set of prints in a limited edition of 150 (not including Jasper Johns's iconic Flag, at right). Art lovers looking to acquire the rare set of prints must donate a minimum of $20,000 to the campaign.

[via The Los Angeles Times]