Displaying items by tag: Andy Warhol

IS Andy Warhol's market as vigorous as his auction results would have us believe? The artist always plays a prominent role in the twice-yearly contemporary sales in New York, but this season his work saw a phenomenal turnover of $181m, almost a third of the week's total proceeds at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips de Pury. The top lot in all three evening sales was a Warhol painting. But the consignment and bidding stories behind these star Warhols vary greatly. Each reveals a different market dynamic: a determined but thin response to rare masterpieces; the passion of Warhol owners for trading the work; and the skewing effects of guarantees (which ensure a work will sell, either to the auction house or a third-party backer). Indeed, there is more to the Warhol market than first meets the eye.

The most expensive work of the week was a four-panel self-portrait from 1963-4, which hit the block at Christie's. Warhol himself had arranged the four crisply silkscreened canvases in various shades of blue. Moreover, the image had been made in a photo-booth; a ready-made format that affirms Warhol's place as the heir to Marcel Duchamp. Only three bidders went for the work, but two of them were fervent. After a 15-minute duel, an anonymous buyer on the phone with Brett Gorvy, Christie's Head of Contemporary Art, prevailed over a client of Philippe Ségalot, a French-born New York-based dealer, and secured the work for $38.4m, the highest price ever paid at auction for a portrait by the artist.

Other Warhol paintings also elicited real competition and sold for high prices. A lush red shadow painting from 1978 sold at Sotheby's for $4.8m and a 1985 canvas entitled "Third Eye", painted by both Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, sold at Phillips for $7m, a record price for a collaboration. These pieces were vibrantly coloured and conservatively estimated, two factors that whet appetites.

At Phillips the highest price of the night was commanded by a 1963 Warhol portrait of Elizabeth Taylor titled "Liz #5 (Early Colored Liz)". Steven Cohen, a hedge-fund manager, agreed to consign it to Phillips in exchange for a third-party guarantee (also called an "irrevocable bid") rumoured to be from the house's principal owners, Leonid Friedland and Leonid Strunin (known in the art world as "the Leonids"). The painting sold at a hammer price of $24m hammer to a client on the phone. As it happens, the second-highest price in the Phillips sale was also a guaranteed Warhol—a large "Flower painting", consigned by José Mugrabi, a dealer with a huge stock of Warhols. It sold on one bid to what could have been the same telephone buyer, this time for $8.1m. Did Messrs Friedland and Strunin acquire the top two lots in their own sale? Generally if a work sells on one bid, it sells to its backer.

"These sales are no longer auctions," says Allan Schwartzman, an art advisor. "To attract material at the top end, auction houses pre-sell the material to 'irrevocable bidders'. They are deliberate, orchestrated events." These deals spare the work the ignominy of being "bought in", but create misleading benchmark prices that tend to flout ordinary rules of supply and demand. Guarantees can help auction houses by securing an important artwork around which an entire sale can be promoted. They may also appeal to a collector's gambling instincts. If he chooses to be the guarantor, he can either win the work or win a financing fee or both. Whatever the case, when the work sells on one bid, a guaranteed lot is effectively a private sale done in public.

The top lot at Sotheby's was again a Warhol, although one that was neither much coveted nor guaranteed. "Sixteen Jackies" is a posthumous compilation of small 1964 portraits of Jackie Kennedy, 15 of which came out of Warhol's estate. Although the work has the benefits of celebrity, death and repetition, Jackie is a very American icon and the arrangement of canvases is awkward. They were put together by Peter Brant, its consignor, with advice from Jeff Koons, an artist with a good eye for old masters but a poor track record in curating contemporary art.

Mr Brant is a key player in the Warhol market. He began collecting the artist in the 1960s and was responsible for the very first appearance of an important Warhol at auction in 1970, when he consigned "Soup can with peeling label" to Sotheby's Parke-Bernet. The work sold for a record price of $60,000 to Bruno Bischofberger, a Warhol dealer and friend of Mr Brant. At the time, the press reported that the lot was "bid up to establish a higher market level."

Viewing: April 28-May 11, 2011

Auction: May 12, 7pm

Location: Phillips de Pury & Company, 450 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022

Phillips de Pury & Company is honored to announce the sale of a rare, iconic portrait of the legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor, painted by Andy Warhol in 1963. The stunning painting will be offered for sale in the Contemporary Art Part I auction on May12th and is estimated at $20,000,000/$30,000,000.

"Liz #5 is a pristine gem. It is Warhol at his very best with a perfect screen, glowing colors, and impeccable provenance. She is classic yet every bit as cutting edge as she was when Warhol painted her nearly 50 years ago. Liz #5 embodies everything that a major collector of 20th century art desires and we are thrilled to offer this rare and exciting opportunity to the market." Michael McGinnis, Senior Director and Worldwide Head, Contemporary Art.

Liz #5 was painted at the height of the actresses' fame which coincided with the most significant creative period of Warhol's career. The glamorous portrait embodies the most important themes of Warhol's oeuvre including including celebrity, wealth, scandal, sex, death and Hollywood. The epitome of old-world Hollywood style and glamor, Liz Taylor was one of Warhol's most famous inspirations alongside Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy. Taylor captured Warhol's attention early on with her life's high profile romances and tragedy; it was this vibrancy and pathos that so attracted Warhol to her and ensured she was a formidable influence on his work throughout his career. In his own words he once said, "Elizabeth Taylor, ohhhh. She's so glamorous.

In Liz #5, her unforgettable face emerges from a rich turquoise background, perfectly capturing her luminous skin, striking violet eyes and red lips. The power of her attraction has never been as evident as it is in this Warhol painting - a dazzling tribute to Elizabeth Taylor. This striking portrait is a testament to the legend and beauty of one of the world's most beloved and iconic actresses, both capturing her very essence and transcending the limits of time.

Liz #5 comes from an important private collector who acquired it from the estate of famed art dealer and collector Ileana Sonnabend. Beginning in the early 1960's, her gallery was instrumental in introducing postwar America Art to Europe and she represented the most prolific and groundbreaking artists of her time including Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol. Liz #5 remained in her personal art collection until her death in 2007. This is the first time a work from her estate will come to auction and it offers the rare possibility to acquire one of the Sonnabend treasures in the open market.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Everything's coming up Warhol this spring at Indiana University, with films, events and an IU Art Museum exhibition devoted to contemporary art and pop culture icon Andy Warhol.

More than 150 photographs by Warhol (1928-1987) will be displayed in "Shot By Warhol," opening March 5 (Saturday) at the IU Art Museum in the Special Exhibitions Gallery on the first floor. The exhibition will remain on display through May 8.

Drawn from the IU Art Museum's recent gift of more than 150 photographs from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts' Photographic Legacy Program, the exhibition will examine the way Warhol's black-and-white photographs reflected his personal experiences and how his color Polaroids shaped the way others wanted to be portrayed during their "15 minutes of fame." (Warhol famously once said, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.")

On March 4 (Friday), Associate Professor of Art History Richard Meyer of the University of Southern California will present a lecture titled "A Reason to Get Up in the Morning" in Fine Arts Building Room 015 from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Meyer considers Warhol's photographic practice as a poetics of everyday life -- when everyday consists of discotheques and dinner parties, flea markets and friends on the phone. Rather than invest in the idea of the single, perfectly composed image, Warhol created an almost continuous stream of pictures, many of which were never published or exhibited during his lifetime. This talk considers Warhol's photographic practice as a visual analogue to his diaries, which will be quoted extensively. The title is drawn from Warhol's statement that "I take my camera everywhere. Having a few rolls of film to develop gives me a good reason to get up in the morning."

After Meyer's talk, IU Cinema will show a 90-minute selection of short 16mm films from Andy Warhol and other "underground" contributors March 4 (Friday) at 6:30 p.m. The films draw upon prints from the university's David Bradley Collection at the Lilly Library and the Kinsey Institute. Nan Brewer, the IU Art Museum's Lucienne M. Glaubinger Curator of Works on Paper, will give a guided tour of the exhibition at 2 p.m. on March 6 (Sunday).

"Warhol was a kind of cultural sponge," said Brewer, organizing curator of the exhibition. "He absorbed inspiration from popular culture, as well as from the art of his contemporaries."

Warhol Happenings

The museum also is hosting a series of free, Thursday evening "Warhol Happenings" in March, all from 8-10 p.m. These events are co-sponsored by the Lucienne M. Glaubinger Endowed Fund for the Curator of Works on Paper and the IU Art Museum's Arc Fund.

• Warhol Happening I, "Music Night," March 10, Thomas T. Solley Atrium. Local indie band Tammar will play both experimental originals and Velvet Underground cover songs.
  
  
• Warhol Happening II, "Movie Night," March 24, Special Exhibitions Gallery. The Ryder Film Series is co-sponsoring a screening of the 1996 independent film I Shot Andy Warhol (Rated R) written and directed by Mary Harron. The film stars Lili Taylor ("Six Feet Under") as the radical feminist Valerie Solanas who attempted to kill Warhol in 1968 and Jared Harris ("Mad Men") as Warhol.
  
  
• Warhol Happening III, "Factory Night," March 31, Thomas T. Solley Atrium. Attendees will be able to "get their Andy on" by sampling a variety of pop culture snacks, dancing to the music mix of DJ White Light, and glimpsing Warhol's world through a tour of the special Warhol exhibition. "Factory Night" will feature an Andy Warhol Look-Alike Contest (all are welcome), and everyone is encouraged to dress in their retro best, and bring a can of soup to donate to the Community Kitchen of Monroe County.

Known for his reserved nature, Warhol was a keen observer of life, frequently seen off to one side of a social scene -- whether at his famous silver-lined Factory or at a charity event -- watching, often through the lens of a camera. He also was an obsessive collector of objects, people and even of artistic styles. When asked in a 1985 interview if he looked at the work of other photographers, Warhol simply replied, "I try to copy them."

Warhol saved bits of ephemera from his daily activities, stuffing items into boxes he called "time capsules." Starting in the mid-1970s, he began using a 35 mm still camera as his primary means of interacting with and recording his surroundings. Although Warhol grew up around photography -- his older brother, John Warhola (Andy dropped the "a" for his own last name), operated a photo shop in his hometown of Pittsburgh -- it wasn't until the 1970s that he fully embraced the medium as a means of personal expression. He began taking color Polaroids to capture imagery for his portrait commissions. Like the preparatory drawings of traditional portrait painters, these studies served as referential tools rather than as artworks in their own right.

When he picked up an easy-to-use Minox 35EL camera in 1976, Warhol began a love affair with black-and-white photography that would last until his untimely death at age 58. His camera became a constant companion, as familiar a part of his ensemble as his trademark silver wig. He strove to document every moment of his life, creating a remarkable visual diary. Warhol produced a body of more than 150,000 black-and-white negatives and 66,000 prints, including thousands of Polaroids.

For more information on the IU Art Museum, see
http://www.indiana.edu/~iuam/iuam_home.php.