In 1913, astonished New Yorkers at the Armory Show were faced with an avant-garde art so fundamentally removed from the accepted view of what art was or could be, that the presence of then rarely-seen works from Africa would probably have been absorbed with the same sharp intake of breath.  The show displayed works

There has been a palpable sense that photography exhibitions in London have been (excuse the pun) on a roll in the latter part of 2012. As never before, a varied and distinctive engagement with photography as an art form is underway in the capital.

 Raphael’s Head of a Young Apostle had pride of place at Sotheby’s December preview party two nights before it came up for auction in London.

This week in London, Russian art has been centre stage: a week of activity in the auction rooms (Christie’s, Sotheby’s and MacDougall’s all had sales of Russian art, each

Phew! What a difference a week makes. After the pallid Impressionist and Modern sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York at the beginning of November, the art market roared back in the Post-War and Contemporary sector with the first-ever $1 billion series of auctions.

Outside the New York salerooms everything was crazy. A snowstorm hit  Manhattan just a week after Superstorm Sandy, stock markets tumbled and a turbulent US presidential election finally went Barack Obama’s way.