Murakami, Lichtenstein, Money Laundering

Thanks to Heather Loring, a Clancco faithful, for this heads-up:

Artist Takashi Murakami is asking a Japanese court to stop a collector from selling his work. Murakami’s production company, Kaikai Kiki, managed to get a sculpture by the artist pulled from Christie’s London evening sale of postwar and contemporary art on June 30, 2008.

According to a press rep for the artist, Flower Ball Blood (3-D) V — an acrylic and platinum leaf relief featuring grinning flowers, which bore a presale estimate of £300,000-£400,000 (ca. $587,700-$783,500) — had initially been sold by the artist to a Japanese real estate company, Cerulean LLC, in January 2007, with a contract that prohibited the resale of the work for ten years.

In other Artnet News:

Another multimillion-dollar artwork from disgraced Brazilian businessman Edemar Cid Ferreira’s “money-laundering art collection” has come to light, this one passing through the hands of Los Angeles art dealer Doug Chrismas. Ferreira, a former head of the São Paulo Biennale and sponsor of the “Brazil: Body and Soul” blockbuster at the Guggenheim Museum in 2002, was sentenced to 21 years in prison last year for bank fraud and money laundering in connection with the 2005 failure of Banco Santos, which left behind $1 billion in debts. When Ferreira was arrested, about 30 artworks from his $30 million collection were missing, according to Brazilian officials, who charged that the businessman had shipped them out of the country as part of a money-laundering scheme.