Displaying items by tag: Art Sale

When Fredric Brandt, the plastic surgeon to the stars, took his own life earlier this year, he left behind a trove of artworks that might have surprised those who thought his tastes were purely cosmetic. His collection, scattered between his homes in New York and Miami, includes works by Wool, Baldessari, Stingel, and Oehlen, and when it came time to find an auction house for the estate, Phillips emerged victorious after a fairly competitive jostle. It began readying the sale of 200 works, valued at $15 million in total, and 18 of these works went on sale tonight, at the house’s contemporary art evening sale in London.

A contemporary art auction that included works by Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama fell short of some expectations Monday.

The sale, held by Seoul Auction in Hong Kong, tallied 67.3 million Hong Kong dollars (US$8.6 million), less than half the expected HK$195.3 million. Of the 49 works available, 20 remained unsold amid thin bidding and a subdued atmosphere.

“I saw a lot people with paddles, but they didn’t bid, they just watched,” said Soyoung Lee, Seoul Auction’s managing director. “We sold 60%, so it’s not the best, but we had a lot of expensive art. I guess people are not really in the mood to buy.”

“They selected some interesting paintings and sculptures, but I think they just didn’t time it well with the market,” said Roger McIlroy, an art adviser and former managing director of Christie’s Australia, as people trickled out of the room.

The star lot, Jeff Koons’s sculpture “Smooth Egg with Bow,” was met with anticlimactic silence as collectors passed on its estimate of HK$55 million to HK$75 million.

“We had a lot of overseas interest in Jeff Koons, but on the other hand, people also asked whether it was going to sell in this economic situation,” Ms. Lee said. Part of his “Celebration” series, this was the first time the steel sculpture appeared in the Asian market.

An Andy Warhol “Dollar Sign” is among artworks worth as much as $3 million being sold by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to recoup some of the debts of real-estate investor Derek Quinlan.

Christie’s International, on the instructions of NAMA, will offer 14 works from an unidentified private collection at auctions in New York and London in November, the auction house said in an e-mail. The collector was named yesterday as Quinlan by four dealers with knowledge of the matter.

Quinlan, a former tax inspector, was one of Ireland’s biggest real estate investors during the “Celtic Tiger” property boom. NAMA is an Irish government agency created to buy risky commercial loans from the country’s beleaguered banks. It took control of some of Quinlan assets in April after the investor failed to present and agree a debt repayment plan.

“These artworks were given to NAMA as security for various loans,” the agency’s spokesman, Ray Gordon, managing director of Gordon MRM media relations, said in an interview. “It has now moved to realize their value.”

The blue and pink Warhol canvas will be included in Christie’s Nov. 9 contemporary-art sale in New York with an estimate of $400,000 to $600,000. Alex Katz’s “Ace Airport” is valued at $150,000 to $200,000.

Christie’s Nov. 17 auction of 20th century British art in London will feature 11 ex-Quinlan works.

‘Still Life’

William Scott’s 1969 abstract “Still Life Variations 2” is priced at as much as 300,000 pounds ($471,000), while “Man Doing Accounts” by Jack B. Yeats -- a long-standing favorite artist with wealthy Irish collectors -- is tagged at 120,000 pounds to 180,000 pounds. The latter sold for 300,000 pounds at Christie’s in 2007. The collection’s works are estimated at as much as 1.9 million pounds.

Quinlan sold some more valuable paintings before NAMA took control of his assets, said dealers. He bought the figure-packed 1946 L.S. Lowry fairground scene “Good Friday, Daisy Nook” from the London-based dealer Richard Green, who’d paid a record 3.8 million pounds for it at Christie’s in June 2007. The work was subsequently sold for an undisclosed loss to another gallery, said dealers. Green also sold the Irish collector the Scott abstract offered by NAMA.

A telephone call to Coroin Limited, the Mayfair-based holding company for Quinlan’s Maybourne Hotel Group, produced no contact details for the Irish businessman. The Maybourne Hotel Group had no contact details.