Displaying items by tag: Sotheby's

Phillips de Pury & Company’s Contemporary art auction took place on November 15 in New York and garnered $79,904,500, a seemingly humble amount compared to the $887.5 million auction powerhouses Sotheby’s and Christie’s collectively raked in just days earlier.

A smaller scale auction house than its counterparts, Phillips de Pury offered 37 works, many of which were by younger emerging artists. Dan Colen, Tauba Auerbach, Rashid Johnson, and Sterling Ruby all hit record prices, but the top lot of the night was Andy Warhol’s portrait of Mao Zedong (1973) that sold for its low estimate of $12 million. Another Warhol portrait, this time of Jacqueline Kennedy from 1964, was being sold by Eli Broad and reached $11 million; it was expected to bring $10 million to $15 million. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Humidity (1982) sold for $9 million, falling considerably behind its low estimate of $12 million. Another Basquiat, Self-Portrait (1982) fared better and brought $4 million, breaking its high estimate of $3.5 million despite having its authenticity questioned earlier in the day.

The auction total landed in the middle of its pre-sale estimate of $73,620,000-$110,730,000. While the edgier offerings from Phillips continued to sell well, works by more established artists brought less impressive prices. While this could be the result of mediocre quality, it is important to remember that tying up a $1 billion auction week is no easy feat.

Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary auction edged out Sotheby’s as the blockbuster sale of the week. Profits reached a walloping $412,253,100 on Wednesday night in New York and only six of the 73 lots went unsold. Beating the pre-sale estimate of $289,350,000-$411,800,000, the auction was the second highest grossing in Christie’s history. The record is currently held by the November 2006 Impressionist and Modern sale that brought $491.5 million. However, last night’s auction was the highest earning sale for the Post-War and Contemporary category to date.

During the course of the sale seven artist records were set and six works sold for over $20 million. Brett Gorvy, Chairman and International head of Post-War and Contemporary Art said, “We curated the sale around the rich variety of quality works and most coveted artists.” Works by these big name artists proceeded to sell for mind-bogglingly astronomical prices.

Andy Warhol’s iconic portrait of Marlon Brando, titled Marlon, (1966) sold for $23,714,500, Roy Lichtenstein’s interior Nude with Red Shirt (1995) brought $28,082,500, and Franz Kline’s seminal Abstract Expressionist painting, Untitled (1957) sold for a record $40,402,500. Other major sales included Warhol’s 3-D Statue of Liberty (1962) that went for $43,762,500, Mark Rothko’s Black Stripe (Orange, Gold and Black) that sold to a telephone bidder for $21,362,500, and Jeff Koons’ stainless steel Tulips (1995-2004) that brought $33,682,500, a new record for the artist. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (1981) was expected to bring in big numbers and did not disappoint at $26,402,500, but the piece stayed under its high estimate of $30 million.

Contemporary sales continue tonight at Phillips de Pury.

The Contemporary art auction that took place at Sotheby’s Tuesday night made up for any disappointment stemming from last week’s Impressionist and modern art sale. Profits from the Contemporary sale reached $375.1, the highest total for any auction in Sotheby’s history. The previous record of $362 million was set in May of 2008.

The biggest sale of the night, Mark Rothko’s No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue) (1954) stirred up some competition and ended up selling to a telephone bidder for $75.1 million after the auction house’s fees. Other impressive sales included Jackson Pollack’s Number 4, 1951 that brought $40.4 million with fees, a record for the artist, and Francis Bacon’s Untitled (Pope) (1954) that sold for $29.7 million with fees. A number of high-quality works on paper by Andy Warhol also sold well. Green Disaster (Green Disaster Twice) (1963) sold to newsprint tycoon, Peter Brant, for $15.2 million and Suicide sold to the Manhattan art dealer, Philippe Ségalot, for $16.3 million, a record for a Warhol work on paper.

Out of 69 works offered at the auction, only 11 went unsold.

The top sale at last night’s Impressionist and modern Art auction at Sotheby’s in New York was a 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso of his muse, Marie-Therese Walter. The suggestive Nature Morte aux Tulipes, estimated at $35 to $50 million, sold to a phone bidder for $41.5 million.

The sale at Sotheby’s took place just one day after Christie’s lackluster Impressionist and modern art auction and didn’t fare much better than its predecessor. While there were some notable sales, 31% of lots went untouched including mid-level works by Degas and Rodin. While many have been blaming the election and unfortunate weather for the mixed sales, the quality of the work featured has also in question. Many have taken note of the padded sales by both auction houses and during these delicate economic times, buyers want to spend money on exceptional works, not mediocre works by exceptional artists.

On a positive note, there were a number of impressive sales besides the Picasso portrait. Claude Monet’s 1881 landscape Champ de Blé estimated at $5 to $7 million fetched $12.1 million and a photograph of Marcel Duchamp taken by Man Ray sold for $2.4 million, well over it’s $1.7 million high estimate. Another work that exceeded expectations was Fernand Leger’s Les Contructeurs, which went for $1.37 million, more than double its low estimate. The sale brought in $163 million; it was expected to garner about $169 million in total.  

Christie’s kicked off their highly anticipated fall auctions with a lackluster Impressionist and Modern Art sale on Wednesday evening. While there were many outstanding circumstances (i.e., Hurricane Sandy, the presidential election, the Dow Jones’ drop) that may have contributed to the sale’s inability to reach its low estimate of $210 million, the auction garnered $204,800,000 but left 21 of its 69 lots unsold. Other factors that may have contributed to the uneven sale were too high estimates and an inconsistence in quality as it was the mid-level works that went without buyers.

The top sales were high with six works selling for over $10 million. Wassily Kandinsky’s early and rare Studie fur Improvisation 8 brought $23 million and a set a record for the artist at auction while just breaking its low estimate of $20 million. Claude Monet’s Nymphaes, a watercolor from his water lilies series, was the evening’s top lot at $43,762,500. Other top lots included Pablo Picasso’s Buste de Femme that sold for $13,074,500, Constantine Brancusi’s white plaster Une Muse that brought $12,402,500, and Joan Miro’s Peinture (Femme, Journal, Chien which fetched $13,746,500.

Sotheby’s sale begins today after three days of delays due to Hurricane Sandy.

On December 5, Sotheby’s in New York will help cosmetics executive, Leonard Lauder, auction off jewelry that once belonged to his wife, Evelyn, and mother Estée. The collection is worth at least $13.4 million and includes a 47.714-carat heart-shaped yellow diamond with connections to the Duchess of Windsor, a Van Cleef & Arpels brooch featuring a pair of ruby tulips and diamonds, a flawless 6.54-carat fancy intense pink diamond ring by Oscar Heyman & Bros, and a 22.16-carat platinum and diamond ring from Graff.

Part of Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels auction, the proceeds from the 35 pieces will benefit the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, an organization founded and championed by Evelyn Lauder. Additional pieces from the collection will be offered in New York as part of the Important Jewels auction in February 2013, also sold to benefit the Research Foundation. Leonard Lauder, chairman of The Estée Lauder Company and acting chairman of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation said, “We are pleased to be partnering with Sotheby’s for this important auction. Each piece of jewelry is unique and very special.”

 The auction comes at a time when high-end jewelry has been outperforming most of the art market. Buyers and collectors continue to seek recession-proof assets and have turned to quality jewelry designed by big names such as Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels for stable investments. Sotheby’s said its jewelry sales were up 19% this year.

On October 11, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decided that the current owner of Egon Schiele’s Seated Woman with Bent Left Leg (Torso) could keep the drawing he purchased in the early 1960s from a gallery in Manhattan. Featuring the artist’s signature muted color palette, the work has been at the center of a seven-year-long legal battle.

The dispute arose when heirs to Fritz Grunbaum, a Viennese cabaret singer who was murdered by Nazis in 1941, claimed that the work had been unlawfully confiscated from Grunbaum’s estate in 1938. Although David Bakalar currently owns the drawing, Grunbaum’s heirs, Milos Vavra and Leon Fischer, considered themselves to be the rightful proprietors. When Bakalar attempted to sell Seated Woman at Sotheby’s London in 2004, Vavra and Fischer stopped the sale. Bakalar, who had bought the Schiele drawing from Galerie St. Etienne for about $3,300, was attempting to sell the work for about $675,000.

Although Grunbaum was a noted collector of Schiele’s work, there was no direct evidence that he had owned Seated Woman or that Nazis had confiscated the drawing. However, evidence emerged that Grunbaum’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, sold the drawing in Switzerland in 1956. The Swiss dealers who had purchased the drawing from Lukacs testified in the case and provided records of the sale. Based on this evidence, the U.S. District Court ruled that Grunbaum was most likely not the drawing’s owner and that Nazis had not stolen the piece, rather, it had stayed with the family until the sale in 1956.

The Court’s ruling was particularly significant because Bakalar had employed New York’s “laches defense,” a defense that is used by good-faith buyers to protect themselves against frivolous claims. While Schiele’s heirs claimed that if Lukacs had owned the drawing it was because she had stolen it from Grunbaum, Bakalar argued that the fact was irrelevant because no claims had been filed and that crucial evidence had disappeared over the decades.

Last week at Sotheby’s auction house in London, Gerhard Richter’s Abstraktes Bild (809–4) sold to a telephone bidder for $34.2 million, the highest price paid for a living artist’s work at auction. Previously owned by musician and collector, Eric Clapton, the abstract painting was estimated to bring $14.1 million to $18.8 million.

Alex Branczik, Senior Director and Head of the Evening Auction of Contemporary Art, said, “The combination of outstanding provenance and gold-standard quality in this sublime work by this blue-chip artist made for an historic auction moment. Gerhard Richter’s international appeal as one of the hottest Contemporary artists was once again confirmed this evening.”

The German postwar painter, best known for his abstract and figurative works, was recently the subject of a critically acclaimed retrospective, Gerhard Richter: Panorama, at the Tate Modern in London, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and the Staatlichen Museum in Berlin. After the show, the prices of Richter’s works have continued to climb.

Friday’s sale beat out Jasper Johns’ Flag painting from the 1960s, which brought $28.6 million at Christie’s in 2010, for a living artist at auction. Richter, 80, lives in Cologne, Germany.

While sales totaled $3,486,127 million at Sotheby’s American Paintings, Drawings, and Sculpture auction on September 28^th in New York, 35% of lots went unsold. Sotheby’s did slightly better than Christie’s in the American Art arena, but both sales are a testament to the lackluster performance of mid-season auctions.

“Sotheby’s did put a few more important paintings in the sale,” said Debra Force of Debra Force Fine Art, Inc. “The question is whether the clientele is there to buy it.” It appears that the clientele interested in purchasing Rockwells were at least in attendance. Is He Coming? (1919), a quintessential Norman Rockwell painting of a young boy and his dog peering up the chimney on what appears to be Christmas Eve, brought in $602,500. The final price was $300,000 more than than the paintings high estimate ($200,000–$300,000).

Sotheby’s sale featured more than 200 paintings, drawings, and sculptures and included property from two noteworthy private collections belonging to Margie and Robert E. Petersen and Susan Kahn Rosenkranz and Richard Rosenkranz. Highlights included works by Rockwell Kent, Marsden Harley, Grandma Moses, and Ben Shahn with Kent and Moses taking two of the top five lots. Moses’ On the Banks of the Hudson reached the third highest price of the sale at $92,500 but still brought in considerably less than its high estimate of $120,000. Rockwell Kent’s Adirondack Farm, Summer sold for $86,5000 (estimate: $25,000–$35,000), the fourth highest sale of the auction.

While the highlights of the auction could have made more money in a more important sale, the quality is there. "Maybe more important collectors need to get used to looking at these mid-season sales," says Force. 

When Beth Feeback, an artist based in North Carolina, bought two paintings at her local thrift shop for just $9.99, she assumed they were a couple of outdated pieces from the 1970s. Feeback brought her purchases home and planned to cover the works with her signature oversized cat faces. Luckily, Feeback turned the paintings around before going to work on her feline creations.

A closer look at the thrift store finds revealed a label identifying Ilya Bolotowsky (1907–1981), a leading 20^th century abstract painter, as the artist of one of the works. The label also indicated that the painting had once been on display at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. After a couple of Google searches, Feeback realized that she had something special on her hands.

The bidding began at Sotheby’s on September 21^st and the painting, identified as Vertical Diamond, sold for much more than expected. While the estimated auction price was set at $15,000 to $20,000, the painting ended up selling for $34,500. Feeback told ABC that her and her husband planned to renovate their home and pay down some debts with the sale’s proceeds. As an homage to Bolotowsky, Feeback will re-create Vertical Diamond, but with giant cat faces painted in the middle.