Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

On Tuesday, December 10, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s announced that they have hired new Chief Marketing Officers. Sotheby’s is bringing former MasterCard CMO Alfredo Gangotena on board, while Christie’s has hired Marc Sands, the Tate’s Director of Media and Audiences.

Bruno Vinciguerra, Sotheby’s Chief Operating Officer, released a statement saying that Gangotena “will be responsible for shaping and delivering Sotheby’s brand message globally -- what we say through digital, advertising, catalogues, the press and philanthropy.”

Sands, who will begin at Christie’s in 2014, is taking over a position that has not been filled since 2011.

Sotheby’s American Art auction, which concluded on December 4 in New York, garnered $83.9 million, far exceeding its high estimate of $62.1 million. The sale was highlighted by a collection of seven paintings by Norman Rockwell from the family of Kenneth J. Stuart Jr. -- the artist’s longtime friend and art editor at the Saturday Evening Post. 

While the entire Stuart collection sold for $59.7 million, the group was led by Saying Grace, which sold for $46 million -- the highest price ever paid for a work sold in an American art auction. The painting was estimated to bring $20 million.

Edward Hopper led Christie's American art sale, which wrapped up on December 5, with his painting East Wind Over Weehawken. The work, which depicts a desolate street corner in Depression-era Weehawken, NJ, sold for $40.5 million -- a record for the artist at auction. The overall sale netted $76.8 million, which is the highest sale total ever for the category at Christie's.  

On Sunday, December 1, Sotheby’s wrapped up Beijing Art Week, a series of sales that marked the company’s first commercial auction in mainland China. The auction house offered $212 million worth of western and Chinese art, jewelry and furniture in three private sales and an auction.

During the Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art auction on Sunday night, a record was set for Chinese-French artist Zao Wou-Ki. the artist’s 1958 oil-on-canvas abstract work, which was sold by the Art Institute of Chicago, brought $14.7 million. Wou-Ki’s previous record was set on October 5 during a sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong when a work sold for $11 million.

China is home to the fastest growing art market and the success of the Beijing sales indicates that there are active buyers on the mainland.

One of only 11 surviving copies of the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in the United States, sold for $14.2 million on November 26 at Sotheby’s in New York. The book, which was purchased by American businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein, set a new world auction record for any printed book. Rubenstein plans to loan the book to libraries across the country before putting it on long-term loan at one of them.

The Bay Psalm Book’s selling price soared past the previous auction record for a printed book, established in December 2010 at Sotheby’s London when a copy of John James Audubon’s Birds of America sold for $11.5 million. The last time a copy of the Bay Psalm Book appeared at auction was in January 1947 when it sold at Sotheby’s for $151,000.

The Bay Psalm Book was published in Cambridge, MA by the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony about two decades after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Approximately 1,700 copies of the book were printed.

Pablo Picasso’s grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso, will raffle off Man in the Opera Hat (1914) to raise funds for the International Association to Save Tyre. The Lebanese city of Tyre is a UNESCO World Heritage site whose history goes back to ancient Phoenicia.

Picasso will sell 50,000 raffle tickets for $135 a piece and a winner will be drawn during an event at Sotheby’s in Paris on December 18. The market value of the small Cubist gouache is said to be around $1 million. The raffle money will go towards creating an arts center and educational institute in Tyre, which has been severely damaged by decades of military conflict.

Picasso will travel to New York in December with the work to promote the raffle. To date, 40,000 raffle tickets have been sold. 

Sotheby’s announced that Tobias Meyer, who has served as the auction house’s worldwide head of contemporary art since 1997, will leave the company. Meyer joined Sotheby’s in 1992 as head of the contemporary art department in London. Rumors have swirled that Meyer’s departure was the result of pressure from Sotheby’s investors to establish new leadership and more efficient operations. Hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, who owns Third Point LLC and is Sotheby’s largest shareholder, has spoken critically of the auction house’s executive compensation and supposedly waning competitive edge.

Meyer said, “I will always cherish my time at Sotheby’s and look forward to the next chapter in my career.I have had over 20 years of the most marvelous experiences at Sotheby’s where I have made many friends and had wonderful times. I wish Sotheby’s the best of luck in the future.”

The auction house said that it has no plans to fill the role of worldwide head of contemporary art. Alex Rotter will continue as the head of contemporary art in the Americas and Cheyenne Westphal as the head of contemporary art in Europe.

The ‘Pink Star,’ a 59.60-carat oval cut fancy vivid pink diamond, was sold during Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels sale in Geneva for a record $83 million on November 13. The gem, which is the largest internally flawless diamond that has ever been graded by the Gemological Institute of America, carried an estimate of $60 million. Sotheby’s said that the buyer was Isaac Wolf, a New York-based diamond cutter who is planning to rename the gem “The Pink Dream.”

When the stone first arrived at Sotheby’s, David Bennett, the Chairman of the auction house’s Jewelry Division in Europe and the Middle East, said, “I have had the privilege of examining some of the greatest gemstones in the world over the past 35 years, and I can say, without hesitation, that ‘The Pink Star’ is of immense importance.” The gem’s vibrant hue combined with its extraordinary size makes it the most exceptional pink diamond known to exist in State, Royal and private collections. The Pink Star belongs to a rare subgroup called “Type IIa,” which includes less than two percent of all gems.  

The diamond was cut from a rough stone weighing 132.5 carats, which was mined in Africa in 1999 by De Beers. It was later cut, polished and transformed into its current form by Steinmetz Diamonds. The Pink Star has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution as well as the Natural History Museum in London.

On November 13, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York realized an impressive $380,642,000 – the highest price achieved for any sale session in the auction house’s history. The 61-lot auction carried an estimate of $280.7 million to $394.1 million and saw records set for seven artists including Andy Warhol.

Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster), the last of four in a series of the artist’s paintings depicting car crashes, sold for $105.4 million, shattering Warhol’s auction record of $71.7 million. The work, which is believed to have come from a private Swiss collection, has belonged to a number of important collectors including Bruno Bischofberger, Gian Enzo Sperone, the Saatchi Collection and Thomas Ammann.

Other highlights from the auction included Gerhard Richter’s large-scale A.B. Courbet, which sold to a telephone bidder for $26.5 million; Cy Twombly’s 24-piece Poems of the Sea, which garnered $21.7 million; Willem de Kooning’s Abstract Expressionist canvas Untitled V, which realized $24.8 million; and Barnett Newman’s abstract By Twos, which sold to dealer David Zwirner for $20.6 million.

New York’s Contemporary art sales kicked off on Monday, November 11 at Phillips. The sale, which featured 40 lots, garnered over $68 million and sold 88% by lot and 84% by value. The top lot was Roy Lichtenstein’s Woman with Peanuts, which sold for $10.8 million, just past its low estimate of $10 million. Other highlights from the sale included Andy Warhol’s Nine Gold Marilyns (Reversal Series), which realized $$9.1 million and Jeff Koons’ Buster Keaton, which sold for $4.4 million. There were a number of records set for popular contemporary artists including Nate Lowman, Lucien Smith and Jacob Kassay.

Sales will continue on November 12 and November 13 at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

The founders of New York’s Dia Art Foundation are suing the organization and Sotheby’s to stop the auctioning of artworks they say were donated with the intention of keeping them readily available to the public. Heiner Friedrich and his ex-wife, Fariha Friedrich, who started the foundation in 1974 with art historian Helen Winkler, filed the suit in the state Supreme Court in Manhattan on November 7, 2013.

The sale, which is scheduled to take place at Sotheby’s on November 13 and 14, includes contemporary artworks by Barnett Newman, Cy Twombly and John Chamberlain – all of which the plantiffs claim were donated or loaned to Dia in the 1970s and 1980. The Friedrichs said in their complaint, “Dia’s proposed auction of the subject works would remove the works from public access and viewing in direct contravention of Dia’s entire intent and purpose and of plaintiffs’ arrangements and understandings with Dia.”

The Friederichs started Dia to help artists bring “visionary projects” to fruition and to make them available to the public. Heiner Friederich has not served on the foundation’s board since 1985; Fariha remains a trustee emeritus. They have asked for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the sale.