Amid a gloomy economic outlook and a global credit crisis, the boom in the contemporary art market continues unabated.

On Feb. 27 Sotheby’s in London sold 54 works for $189.4 million. The total was the highest ever for a contemporary art auction in Europe. Three months earlier, Sotheby’s in New York recorded its highest auction total ever when its Contemporary Art Evening sold 65 of 71 lots for nearly $316 million.

The market for fine art has been on a steady upswing since 2002, even as the U.S. real estate market slumped. The sale of contemporary artworks has reached unprecedented heights at auction. Hiscox Art Market Research, a specialist insurer, reported last summer the value of contemporary art had risen by 55 percent at auctions during the previous 12 months.

Read the complete story in the April 2008 issue of Style Century Magazine. Click here to read this issue.

John T. Scott was far more than an infinitely creative mind – he was educator, mentor and guiding spirit to New Orleans’s artistic community. Two-thousand-five was a pivotal year for Scott. Works from every stage of his career appeared in a major retrospective, Circle Dance: The Art of John T. Scott, which opened in May of that year at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

The sculpture, paintings, and woodcuts were captured in an accompanying catalog that also included a valuable interview with the artist and an essay on his work. The foreword was written by musician Ellis Marsalis – a friend, occasional collaborator, and one-time colleague at Xavier University – who shared Scott’s faith in the arts as a basis for living.

The show’s title, Circle Dance, comes from the African ring dances seen by travelers such as architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who wrote about his visit to New Orleans in the early 19th century. Richard J. Powell, a professor of art and art history at Duke University, wrote in the introductory essay to the catalog: “But ‘circle dance’ also refers to the city of New Orleans itself – a place whose anthropomorphic aspect routinely conjures in the mind’s eye bodies in motion.”

Read the complete story in the April 2008 issue of Style Century Magazine. Click here to read this issue.

Painting on marble, from the ground up

How does one leave behind 25 years as an artistic director of French magazines in a major advertising firm, a 1,000-square-foot apartment in the fashionable Marais section of Paris, and one’s own publishing company in the French capital, to work the street market of Cannes?

“Very easily,” replied 49-year-old Philippe Gourdon, a Frenchman who departed his fast-paced life in 2007 for a more soothing but uncertain one in the south of France.

Gourdon’s lifestyle and choices challenge anyone’s preconceived notions of a successful businessman or street peddler. Disarmingly humble, charming yet unassuming, he is now enjoying his complete and utter immersion as a full-time artist.

His goal? To bring together two unlikely media – marble stone as his “canvas” and traditional oil paints – to express his visions of beauty. In this effort Gourdon has not just succeeded; he has triumphed.

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The California school of art isn’t a bricks-and-mortar building in San Francisco or L.A., but rather a collective genre formed by artists who painted missions and Old West scenes, rolling hills and seascapes, indigenous peoples and latter-day industrialists – whether traditional or Impressionistic – from 1847 to the present day.

The panoramic Pacific and near-coastal terrain were frequent choices as subject matter, since early California artists arrived by ship and tended to settle near the water rather than moving further inland to parts unknown. The movement really began to gather steam after California became the 31st state in the Union, in 1850. And despite their late start compared to their East Coast counterparts, California artists have long occupied the top ranks of American art in terms of quality.

Read the complete story in the February 2008 issue of Style Century Magazine.

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Is the Western world ready for the wildly unconventional ideas of Japan’s art maverick? Apparently so.

For those who had not yet heard of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami (b. 1962), two events in 2007 announced his importance within the contemporary art world. One was the record auction price realized in November at Sotheby’s New York for his 2004 painting Vapor Trail. The $2,393,000 figure replaced a previous record set the year before, when Nirvana 2001 was auctioned for $1,136,000 by the same firm.

Art from south of the border has never been hotter

For many Americans, recognition of Latin-American art goes no further than the dramatic murals of Diego Rivera or the intensely revealing self-portraits of his wife, Frida Kahlo. From the viewpoint of connoisseurs and collectors, however, there is far greater variety to the genre, and at the moment, Latin-American artworks are as hot as the tropical regions from which many of them originated.

The timeless appeal of Art Deco posters

They look chic with spare, contemporary interiors. They complement Mid-century industrial styles. And they fit beautifully, of course, with furnishings from the 1920s and ’30s.

Art Deco posters make a 20th-century statement that has resonated ever since their creation.

“If I could go anywhere in the world, I would like to go back to the Sudan – to paint the light”

By the time 41-year-old Logang reached Europe in summer 2005, he had already traveled halfway across Africa, from his native Sudan to Mali. He was supporting his wife and five children on a humble artist’s income in Madrid, Spain, where he had been given political asylum. And yet, he was accomplished, having studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Morocco. His colorful oils on canvas – a curious mix between primitive and modern – caught the eye of American art dealer Jesslyn James one day on a sunny sidewalk in Nice, France.