Displaying items by tag: Christie's

Tracey Emin’s bed, strewn with cigarette butts, discarded condoms and empty booze bottles, was among the top pieces at Christie’s 99.4 million-pound ($170.5 million) postwar and contemporary art sale in London yesterday.

The provocative British artist, 50, sat in the front of the packed salesroom as her 1998 piece, “My Bed,” surged from the opening bid of 650,000 pounds to the final price of 2.5 million pounds, including buyer’s commission. The result smashed her previous auction record of 481,875 pounds and more than doubled the expected high target of 1.2 million pounds.

“Not yours here, Tracey,” auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen said to the artist in jest as he wielded multiple bids from the podium.

Since Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” (1969) sold at Christie’s for $142.4 million in New York last November a rash of paintings by that Irish-born artist have emerged for sale. The auction at Sotheby’s on Monday night, which kicked off the contemporary art sales here, will be remembered for buoyant bidding on a triptych by Bacon from 1964, which brought $45.4 million, well above its $33.6 million high estimate.

Four telephone bidders fought for the painting, “Three Studies for Portrait of George Dyer (on Light Ground),” which depicts the artist’s lover and was painted at the height of their affair.

Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Figure for Landscape (1960) sold for a record-setting £4,170,500 / ($7,085,680) at Christie’s sale of modern British and Irish art in London on Wednesday evening. Hepworth’s previous record was set at the same Christie’s sale in July of last year for Curved Form (Bryher II) (1961), which was sold for £2,413,875 ($3,604,412), according to the artnet Price Database.

The sculpture, which was estimated to fetch £1–2 million, was consigned by Norway’s Kunsthall Stavanger, which is on the brink of closure due to lacking public funds.

Christie’s failed to sell 33 percent of the artworks offered in its Impressionist and modern art evening sale in London as collectors rebelled against aggressive estimates and subpar quality.

Yesterday’s tally of 85.8 million pounds ($145.7 million) was about 30 percent lower than rival Sotheby’s (BID) sale the night before. Of the 60 lots offered, 20 failed to find buyers, including works by Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian and Alberto Giacometti.

“There was a big difference in quality between the two sales,” said London-based art dealer Pilar Ordovas. “There were many works which would have been better suited for a day sale.”

‘Figure for Landscape’ by Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE (1903–1975) was first unveiled outside Kunsthall Stavanger’s building in 1968.

Her sculpture hit the local headlines last and this month after the art association – formerly known as Stavanger Kunstforening – decided to sell the work to raise money.                        

The sale is intended to bring funding to maintain the building and operation, keep staff on, and put on exhibitions for further revenue. But the 41 to 15 vote in favour of selling Stavanger’s most valuable sculpture was not without repercussions.

Local art milieu members and representatives slammed the Board, calling the move “a theft”, and “madness”. Over 260 signed a petition, and Stavanger’s Galleri Oppdahl encouraged people stage a boycott.

The reclusive heiress Huguette Clark sold her first painting Wednesday, three years after her death at 104. She did okay, too, with two paintings of Fifth Avenue (as seen from a window of her Manhattan mansion) each going for $19,000 at a Christie’s auction in New York.

A self-portrait of the artist holding a palette went for $13,000, and Clark’s work titled “Cereus, night blooming cactus” fetched $6,000, our colleague Melinda Henneberger reports.

At least four descendants of Huguette’s father, billionaire copper baron and Montana senator William A. Clark, were among those bidding.

Locked behind glass, illuminated like a jewel, lies an Hermès Birkin — totem of wealth, bestower of status, and one seriously expensive handbag.

This particular specimen is a coveted Hermès White Himalayan Birkin, dyed in brown and beige crocodile. Gently, if ever, used, it is offered at $115,000.

Wait — used?

That word is never spoken, not here inside the hushed Midtown Manhattan showroom of Heritage Auctions. The preferred term is “rare” or “vintage” — in this case, applied to a handbag made all the way back in 2013.

No one, it is said, knows more about the buying and selling of pre-owned Hermès bags than Matthew Rubinger, Heritage’s Birkin whisperer. But now Mr. Rubinger, 26, has left for another more famous auction house — Christie’s International — and the battle of the Birkins has begun.

The Assn. of Art Museum Directors sanctioned the Delaware Art Museum on Wednesday for selling its 1868 William Holman Hunt painting “Isabella and the Pot of Basil” this week to help make debt payments and build its endowment.

The painting, part of the museum’s permanent collection, sold for $4.25 million at Christie's, an incident that left the museum directors association “deeply troubled and saddened.”

“Art museums collect works of art for the benefit of present and future generations,” read the statement from the AAMD, which has long said artworks should be deaccessioned only to generate funds to acquire other works of art and to enhance a collection. “Responsible stewardship of a museum’s collection and the conservation, exhibition, and study of these works are the heart of a museum’s commitment to its community and to the public.”

Christie’s auction house says science has confirmed that a disputed painting is the work of Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. The painting could fetch 8 million pounds ($13 million) when it is sold next month.

“Saint Praxedis” is believed to be the earliest surviving work by the 17th-century artist, but there has long been a question mark over its authenticity.

The work was tentatively attributed to Vermeer after it appeared in an exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum in 1969, and the authorship was reinforced in 1986, when leading Vermeer scholar Arthur Wheelock argued it was authentic.

A logjam of giant names in the arts comes together in one small canvas to be auctioned next month: Lucian Freud, painted by Francis Bacon, and owned by the late Roald Dahl.

Dahl died in 1990, Bacon in 1992, and Freud in 2011. Although they later fell out, the young Bacon and Freud were close friends, who painted one another's portraits – and Dahl was a great admirer and friend of Bacon's.

The renowned children's author bought this Study for Head of Lucian Freud in 1967, the year it was painted, for £2,850 with the proceeds from one of his most famous books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It will be sold next month at Christie's estimated at up to £12m.