Galleries expand their reach in London

Any concerns that 2021 would involve a Brexit-related exodus of art galleries from London can be put aside. The latest commitment to the capital comes from global heavyweight Hauser & Wirth: the gallery is more than doubling its space in town with the purchase of 19 South Audley Street, previously the home of the fine tableware store Thomas Goode and Co. Hauser & Wirth has bought the lease for an undisclosed sum; when the building was sold in 2016, it was estimated at around £80m.

“Despite the disappointments and disadvantages that came with Brexit, our artists all want to show in London. It has such a draw and vibrancy. London is by no means dead by a thousand cuts,” says Iwan Wirth, president of the gallery.

The 15,000 sq ft, Grade II-listed Victorian building will take two years to convert into a 21st-century gallery space, including measures to minimise its carbon footprint, Wirth says. The gallery will keep its 11,000 sq ft Savile Row spaces — “these are flexible and neutral, which suits some of our artists” — but will make South Audley Street its new flagship building.

“We are seriously investing in the digital sphere but believe the greatest works of art need to be seen in real life,” Wirth adds. “We are competing with a lot of noise, and a generation increasingly absent from real life. We need to get their attention with history, character and experience — in the heart of Mayfair.”

The foundation for Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) will offer some of his images as Non-Fungible Tokens this month. Marcus Mucha, the Czech artist’s great-grandson and executive director of the foundation, describes his great-grandfather as “an innovator at heart” and says that NFTs “would doubtless have fascinated him”. The foundation does not sell its art, he says, but the NFTs mean that “people can enjoy a Mucha on their metaverse walls as much as on their living room walls in Paris in the 1890s”.

The first monthly drop lands on December 17, to coincide with the opening of the Mucha to Manga exhibition in Taipei. On offer initially are six NFT-backed images — all in the Taipei exhibition — that range from 0.3 ETH to 0.75 ETH ($1,200-$3,000 at time of writing). Their sale marks the launch of an art trading platform by Vive Arts, a subsidiary of Taiwan-headquartered technology company HTC.

While auctioneers move into the valuation and consultancy business, the art appraisal and advisory company Gurr Johns has moved deeper into its traditional arena with the acquisition of Forum Auctions. Forum specialises in the digital sales of books, works on paper and other multiples, and is one of the biggest sellers of prints by Banksy, notes Gurr Johns chief executive Ben Clark. Forum’s founder Stephan Ludwig will become co-chief executive alongside Clark. In 2017, Gurr Johns bought the regional auction house Dreweatts for £1.25m.

“The majority of art sold is for under $250,000. It is an area that the major auction houses don’t want to service but for us is the sweet spot for shoppers who aspire to be collectors,” Clark says.

René Magritte’s signature “Torse nu dans les nuages” (c1937) sold for $8.4m in a live sale at Bonhams, New York on Tuesday ($10m with fees, est $6m-$9m). The painting topped the 13 works successfully offered from the collection of the Swiss-born artist and collector Amalia de Schulthess, who died this year. Pieces by Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti were among the lots while three sculptures and a painting by De Schulthess herself, a rarity at auction, sold for up to $8,500 ($10,800 with fees). A further 36 works from the collection are on sale online until December 14 via bonhams.com.

“There is an undeniable affinity between artists and chefs,” writes Christina Makris in the introduction to her new book, Aesthetic Dining: The Art Restaurant Around the World (Cultureshock). The histories of 24 arty restaurants including Scott’s and Sketch in London, Harlem’s Red Rooster and Cairo’s Abou el Sid are charted, while artists who have opened (and closed) restaurants — including Damien Hirst and Theaster Gates — are part of the wider story. Despite its subject matter, this is not a coffee-table book. Makris has a doctorate in philosophy so notions such as “taste” get a grilling, while there are also some fruity artist interviews (conducted by Makris and Tim Marlow, director of the Design Museum) that make for entertaining accompaniments.

As the year draws to a close, a new opinion-based podcast series called Hope and Dread seems to sum up the poles between which the cultural world now oscillates. The project, subtitled “Tectonic shifts in power”, is a punchy collaboration between the art adviser Allan Schwartzman and Charlotte Burns, founder of editorial content platform Studio Burns — the pair previously produced “In Other Words” when at Sotheby’s.

Their interviewees are pooled from beyond the usual art market suspects and include Ed Vaizey, who was the UK government’s minister for culture between 2010 and 2016. In an episode to be aired on December 22, Vaizey says that he now backs the return to Greece of the contested Elgin Marbles from the British Museum. “It is so obvious to me that the Elgin Marbles are really woven into Greek identity that it would be a wonderful thing if they could be returned,” he says.

The Art Market column returns on January 15

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