Displaying items by tag: Auctions

There’s more than $2.1 billion of art for sale at the New York auctions next month. Almost half of it, including an Andy Warhol painting belonging to billionaire Steven A. Cohen, already has a buyer before the first paddle goes up.

When the two-week sales start Nov. 4, $1 billion worth of paintings and sculptures are guaranteed to sell by Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips at minimum prices regardless of what happens in the salesroom. The companies are lining up deep-pocketed backers for the guarantees or financing them with their own money -- a risky proposition because they can end up owning the works if there are no takers.

Art auctions used to be a gentlemen’s business. Now the gloves are off.

As art sales face their first major test since the August financial market rout, auction houses are jockeying not only for trophy artworks but also for the best positions to highlight them at the November auctions in New York. The result is a shakeup in a schedule that for years was tightly coordinated, with Christie’s and Sotheby’s traditionally alternating who goes first. Even the weekends are no longer off limits; in a surprising move, Phillips, the smallest of the three, switched its main sale to a Sunday.

The Tenth Annual MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK week will take place January 23 through January 30, with a Preview scheduled for Friday, January 22, at 30 leading art galleries on the Upper East Side’s “Gold Coast’ in New York.

Timed to coincide with New York’s major January art-buying events, including the Old Master auctions and The Winter Antiques Show, over the past decade MASTER DRAWINGS NEW YORK has given top dealers from the US as well as the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy an opportunity to show their newest acquisitions to the largest assembly of drawings scholars and patrons to gather in New York each year.

China has lost its place as the world leader of public auctions of works of art, according to a report by Artprice that was released to the AFP. Fuelled by major sales in New York, the US has overtaken the Asian giant, which is now followed closely by the UK.

This is “an unexpected rebound when, year after year, China seemed confident in holding its place at number one,” says Thierry Ehrmann, the president and founder of the Artprice database and index firm.

There's always a battle going on somewhere between Sotheby's and Christie's for some piece of the art cake. But to get a sense of the biggest confrontation on the calendar, London is the place to be next weekend when the two auction houses exhibit highlights from their forthcoming New York sales of Impressionist, Modern (Monet to late Picasso) and Contemporary art (Rothko to today).

The most significant exhibit without a doubt is Picasso's eye-popping "Les Femmes d'Alger," 1955, based on a painting by Delacroix, that has a whopping $US140 million ($183 million) estimate from Christie's.

Everything but the kitchen sink would be one way to describe the staggering array of possessions owned by Lauren Bacall that go under the hammer in New York next week.

From fine art to kitchenware, from avant garde to the kitsch: hundreds of items collected and loved by the Hollywood siren go on sale Tuesday and Wednesday at Bonhams auction house.

The collection is nothing if not eclectic. It includes jewelry and clothes, Aboriginal and African art, English and French furniture and items bought in antique shops around the world.

The major spring auctions in New York are still more than a month away, but clues are starting to emerge about potential heavyweights. Earlier this week, Christie’s said that it plans to ask around $40 million for the 90-work estate of former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead on May 4-5, including Impressionist and modern pieces by Claude Monet and Amedeo Modigliani.

On Friday, Sotheby’s said it plans to seek even more—around $50 million—on May 12.

Sotheby’s may find itself in a new shareholder fight even as its battle with billionaire investor Daniel Loeb and search for a new chief executive officer proved costly in 2014.

The New York-based auction house said today that profit fell 9 percent in 2014 as expenses increased. Net income fell to $117.8 million, or $1.69 a share in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, from $130 million, or $1.90 a share in the same period last year, Sotheby’s said today in a statement.

Piece by piece, the furnishings of the last Hawaiian queen, Liliuokalani, are returning to Iolani Palace here, on a grassy square wedged between office buildings and populated by egrets. The royal property was dispersed through auctions and giveaways around 1900, but benefactors are retrieving it from antiques stores, thrift shops, backyards, storage units, museums and government offices worldwide.

During a recent tour of the palace, an Italianate 1880s building that became a museum in 1978, its curator, Heather Diamond, and its docent educator, the historian Zita Cup Choy, described how chairs, tables, dinnerware and cuff links had ended up scattered.

Sales of Old Masters got off to a slow start as about $42 million of art from the 15th to 19th century was auctioned in New York.

Christie’s sold $36.6 million, missing its low estimate of $54 million in three sales yesterday. Of the 54 lots in its paintings sale, only 22 were sold. Sotheby’s drawings sale totaled $5.3 million, within its estimate of $4.2 million to $5.9 million.

The auctions, which continue through Jan. 30, are offering about $200 million of paintings, drawings and sculptures. The auction houses are trying to revive interest in what had been the most popular category until the 1980s, when other groups such as modern and contemporary art gained favor.