Displaying items by tag: Christie's

Christie’s has announced that it will offer eleven works from Cy Twombly’s personal collection during its upcoming sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art in New York. The works, which are being offered by the Cy Twombly Foundation,  were all created between 1961 and 1967 by artists represented by the legendary Leo Castelli Gallery -- Twombly’s dealer for over four decades. The collection is expected to fetch around $15 million.

Twombly, who is best known for his calligraphic, graffiti-like paintings, collected works by his friends and contemporaries, including Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, and Claes Oldenburg.

A pair of Chinese porcelain vases fetched $1.2 million; a 7-inch-tall celadon vase sold for $2.3 million and a bronze Buddha statue went for $485,000 -- all blowing past their presale estimates many times over.

So went the buying spree during Asia Week in New York this week as Chinese dealers and collectors packed the salesrooms and snapped up pieces of their cultural heritage. Auctions at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams and Doyle New York are expected to tally $95 million.

Phillips is planning to open a saleroom in Hong Kong “as soon as possible”, says Edward Dolman, who joined the auction house as its chairman and chief executive in July. Dolman, who worked at Christie’s for 27 years where he launched salerooms in Paris, New York and Hong Kong, says he has spent “a lot of time” over the past ten years developing the auction business and recruiting in Hong Kong. “It’s a very exciting market,” he says.

Christie’s announced the sale of Donald Judd’s "Untitled (Bernstein 93-1)" as one of the highlights of the fall auction season. The fifteen foot high sculpture will be included in the Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art on Wednesday, November 12th. In scale, design, radiance, effect and simplicity, "Untitled (Bernstein 93-1)" is one of the most important works by the artist to be presented on the market and confirms Donald Judd's position as a master of Minimalist art. "Untitled (Bernstein 93-1)" was executed a few months before the artist’s death; this magnificent sculpture, one of the artists large scale stack sculptures, has remained in the same collection since its creation in 1993.

Donald Judd's "Untitled (Bernstein 93-1)," is an icon of 20th century sculpture, and one of the artists most important and recognizable works. Judd's approach to sculpture was truly revolutionary, using industrial materials and pared-down geometric forms that equally stressed the physical structure and the space around it.

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.

From September 10-18, Christie’s auction house will host a pop-up exhibition of post-war and contemporary art in downtown Los Altos -- an affluent community in California’s booming Silicon Valley. Passerelle, a local real estate and urban planning firm, helped organize the show, which will present major works by Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Richard Diebenkorn, and Tracey Emin as well as cutting-edge contemporary art. The exhibition will include works available for private sale as well as highlights from the upcoming fall auctions in New York.

A panel discussion titled “StART Up: Beginning (and Growing) Your Art Collection” will be held on September 13.

A longtime assistant to Jasper Johns pleaded guilty on Wednesday to selling 22 artworks he stole from the artist's Connecticut studio.

The plea deal followed a separate case, earlier this year, in which another former collaborator of Mr. Johns pleaded guilty to selling works unauthorized by the artist. The cases highlight the risks and rewards of forging works by living artists as contemporary art prices soar. (The record price for a work by Mr. Johns, set at Christie's in 2010, is $28.6 million.)

On September 9 and 10, Christie’s London will offer the first portion of the collection of antique dealer and interior designer Christopher Hodsoll as part of its “Interiors” auction. The second part of the collection will be featured on September 16 at the auction house’s “Interiors -- Style & Spirit” sale. Hodsoll, who is based in London, is well-known for his idiosyncratic taste in antique furniture as well as his ability to create striking interiors that blend classical pieces with the rare and unusual.

Hodsoll began dealing antiques with his mentor, the late design legend Geoffrey Bennison. Bennison’s predilection for the decadent as well as the eccentric rubbed off on Hodsoll and has had a profound influence on his style.

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.