In case you haven't noticed graffiti art has gone mainstream. Spray paint art even has a new name; Street Art. Alice Fisher has an article in The Guardian explaining how Street Art has moved, with the help of the internet, from underground to mainstream acceptance by the establishment in short order.

From the article:

It's the anti-establishment movement that has taken the art market by storm, keenly collected by hedge-funders and Hollywood' s A-list. Now, even Tate Modern is giving Street Art its stamp of approval.

Read the full article by Alice Fisher in The Guardian

A painting by an artist whose work is expected to draw bids of $4 million to $6 million at Sotheby's auction house this summer has been selected as the image for the 2008 Spoleto Festival USA poster.

An oil-on-linen abstract work, "Painting With Verticals, Cadence 3 (2006)" by British artist Bridget Riley, will be mounted in its original horizontal format. This is a festival poster "first" since preceding images have been vertical...

Read full story by Dottie Ashley in The Post and Courier (South Carolina, USA) and learn how to purchase the print too.

April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Andy Warhol has overtaken Picasso as the world's most actively traded artist, said the French-based art-market database, Artprice, in its annual report on trends.

Warhol led the 2007 table of the world's 500 most auctioned artists with $422.3 million in sales, more than doubling the year-earlier $199.6 million, Artprice said....

Read full story by Scott Reyburn at Bloomberg.com

An act of artistic philanthropy on a par with Britain's greatest - including bequests by Samuel Courtauld and Henry Tate - was unveiled today in a move that will see 725 works of postwar and contemporary art donated to the nation.

The London dealer Anthony d'Offay is giving over almost his entire...

Read full story by Mark Brown in The Guardian

Contemporary-art sales in London rose more than 50 percent to 245.7 million pounds ($487.2 million) in February from a year earlier, figures from auction houses show, a sign the market is weathering a worldwide economic slowdown.

Sotheby's, Christie's International and Phillips de Pury & Co. said they sold 56.4 percent more contemporary art than...

Read the full story by Scott Reyburn at Bloomberg.com

John Preston reviews The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses by Don Thompson

Don Thompson has good advice for anyone who walks into an art gallery with even vague thoughts of buying a work of art. Ignore the girl behind the desk who looks at you with withering disdain and says, 'Can I help you?' in tones that clearly indicate she would much rather be knocking back a bracing draught of strychnine.

She is only there to reinforce the idea that art galleries are temples of high culture into which the man off the street should step with fearful...

Read full story The Telegraph UK

LONDON.- Following Sotheby’s hugely successful pioneering London sale of Russian Contemporary Art in February, 2007 – the Company’s best-ever year for sales of Russian Art – on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Sotheby’s will hold its second ever sale in this category in London. Comprising more than 150 lots which range in media from fine art to sculpture and photography, the works selected for sale not only span the second half of the 20th century, but also include compositions by some of Russia’s most successful and talented young artists produced since the year 2000, up to the present day. Among others, artists featured include ...

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LONDON.- Sotheby’s announced that in February 2008, it will be holding its flagship Contemporary Art auctions during a stand-alone week of Contemporary Art events for the first time, including an extended public exhibition devoted solely to the best international Post-War and Contemporary Art. An Evening Sale of around 70 lots will be held on Wednesday, February 27th, and will be followed by Morning and Afternoon sessions of classic and cutting-edge Contemporary Art on Thursday, February 28th....

Read full story at Art Daily