Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

Two and a half years ago, the Man Ray Trust hung out a shingle in the Wall Street Journal. ‘Come buy our archive,’ the story all but begged. Evidently, no buyer emerged for the 400 works because Sotheby’s has announced that the collection will be sold in 300 lots in Paris on November 15th. This will be the second largest sale of Man Ray’s works following the previous sale of estate works nearly 20 years ago:

At the core of the sale is a group of over 191 lots of  vintage photographs ranging from portraiture and fashion photography, including solarisation and gauze effects, to Surrealist compositions and iconic Man Ray photographs such as "Magnolia Flower" (1926), Starfish (1928), "Ostrich Egg" (1944) and "Mathematical Object" (1934).

On 11 November 2014 Sotheby’s New York will present "In Pursuit of Beauty: The Myron Kunin Collection of African Art" in a single owner sale of approximately 190 lots, estimated to fetch $20-30 million. Assembled by Myron Kunin, whose Regis Corporation incorporates over 10,000 salons worldwide including brands from Supercuts to Vidal Sassoon and Jean-Louis David, the collection is considered to be among the finest private groups of non-western art in the world. The outstanding highlight of the sale will be The Senufo Female Statue (Deble), Ivory Coast, one of the most iconic and widely-published works of African Art (Estimate upon request). The pre-sale exhibition opens in New York on 8 November with highlights being shown in Paris from 9-22 September.

Heinrich Schweizer, Head of Sotheby’s African and Oceanic Art Department, recalls: “Myron Kunin was one of the most passionate, knowledgeable, and uncompromising collectors I have ever met. He had the rare ability to identify the very best artworks, irrespective of culture or time-period, and then the courage and unwavering commitment to do whatever it took to acquire them. The result was a world-class collection that stands as one of the finest ever assembled in the field of African Art.”

One of the last great Turner masterpieces remaining in private hands will be the highlight of Sotheby’s London Evening sale of Old Master on 3rd December 2014. Painted in 1835 by Britain’s most celebrated artist, Rome, from Mount Aventine is among Turner’s most subtle and atmospheric depictions of the Italian city, a subject that captivated Turner for over twenty years. The large-scale oil painting is further distinguished by its exceptional state of preservation, as well as a prestigious and unbroken provenance, having changed hands for the only time in 1878, when it was acquired by the 5th Earl of Rosebery, later Prime Minister of Great Britain. The picture has remained in the Rosebery collection ever since and will be offered for sale with an estimate of £15-20 million.

Discussing the forthcoming sale, Alex Bell, Joint International Head and Co-Chairman of Sotheby’s Old Master Paintings Department said: “There are fewer than ten major Turners in private hands known today and this work must rank as one of the very finest.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s have long dominated the auction market for fine art. Now Phillips, the world’s third biggest auctioneer of international contemporary works, is about to open a new flagship salesroom here that it hopes could help challenge that duopoly.

The company, with auction rooms in New York and London, plus offices in eight other cities, has moved its European headquarters from Victoria, near one of London’s main railroad stations, to a 73,000-square-foot building at 30 Berkeley Square, in the heart of the wealthy Mayfair district

Christie’s has announced that two monumental works by Andy Warhol will lead its highly anticipated Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 12. The silkscreen paintings, “Triple Elvis [Ferus Type]” (1963) and “Four Marlons” (1966), are expected to fetch around $70 million each. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International Head of Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s, suspects that interested buyers could try to acquire both works and keep them as a unique pair. Warhol’s current record at auction was set last November at Sotheby’s when his two-panel painting “Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster)” sold for $104.5 million.

“Triple Elvis” and “Four Marlons” are being offered for sale by the German casino company WestSpiel.

Sotheby’s auction house is betting big on the latest global art market boom with financial filings showing the house is increasing its borrowing from corporate lenders in order to extend more guarantees to potential consigners. According to an 8-K filing made with the SEC on August 25, Sotheby’s is upping the commitments from lender GE Capital to $850 million from $600 million.

Among the goals listed for the increased borrowing are raising “the maximum permissible amount of net outstanding auction guarantees (.i.e auction guarantees less the impact of related risk and reward sharing arrangements) from $300 million to $600 million.”

A collection of 548 photographs taken by Edward Weston and printed posthumously by his son Cole Weston — the only person Weston authorized to print from his negatives — will be auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York on Sept. 30. The house is estimating that the prints, which are being sold in a single lot, may bring as much as $3 million.

Weston began his career as a photographer in the first decade of the 20th century and produced about 1,400 images over the next four decades. His best-known and most striking work includes stark black-and-white images, desert landscapes, nudes, and inanimate objects like trees, rocks and shells, which in his photographs often look like sculpture.

Photographer Louise Lawler will be the next artist to fill the billboard located at the base of the High Line -- New York’s elevated, linear park. The image, which depicts a room at Sotheby’s that contains works by Minimalist and Conceptual art icons Frank Stella, Sol Lewitt, and Donald Judd, is the 15th installation in the High Line’s billboard series. Other artists who have participated in the public art project include the Conceptual artist John Baldessari, photographer Robert Adams, and the British artist David Shrigley.

In the early 1970s, Lawler began looking critically at the ways in which art was displayed outside of the artist’s studio. She began photographing other artists’ works on view in collectors’ homes, in storage spaces, and on view at auction houses, challenging the viewer to think about the context in which works of art are displayed and documented.

Following Sotheby’s two previous selling exhibitions of Western fine and decorative arts held in 2012 and 2013, the renowned international auction house will mount its third annual “Age of Elegance: European Paintings, Furniture and Sculpture” sale in Beijing on September 7 and 8.

Hosted in the Grand Ballroom of the Kerry Hotel, “Age of Elegance” contains an exquisitely curated selection of 65 items that embody the stellar craftsmanship and extravagantly ornamental tastes of European decorative arts from the rococo period up until the 20th century.

At the very highest end of the scale is Francois Linke’s extraordinary Grand Bureau (US$6 million), a gilt bronze writing desk and chair first shown at the Paris World Expo in 1900 that represents the summit of belle époque splendor.

At the New York headquarters of Cora International LLC, Suzette Gomes is spellbound by a sight of rare beauty.

“You can’t describe that blue,” said Gomes, chief executive officer of the diamond-cutting company. “You just drown in it.”

“That blue” refers to the Blue Moon diamond. Cora paid $25.6 million for the uncut, 29.6-carat stone in February.

Colored diamonds are the world’s most expensive stones. A 14.82-carat orange diamond sold for $36 million at Christie’s International in Geneva in November, setting a record $2.4 million a carat. The same month, Sotheby’s sold the Pink Dream, a 59.6-carat pink stone, for $83 million.