Displaying items by tag: Wade Guyton

Jackson Pollock, the master of Abstract Expressionism, reached an endgame with his groundbreaking drip paintings in 1950, and then experimented with a new technique, akin to drawing, of pouring thinned black enamel onto unprimed cotton duck.

“The power of Pollock’s allover drip paintings from 1947 to 1950 is so all-commanding that they’ve forced a blind spot in our ability to look at other aspects of the artist’s genius,” said Gavin Delahunty, senior curator of contemporary art at the Dallas Museum of Art. He began researching Pollock’s “black pourings,” made from 1951 to 1953, after conversations with artists including Wade Guyton, Jacqueline Humphries and Julie Mehretu, who discussed their influence.

This past November, Francis Bacon’s triptych portrait Three Studies of Lucian Freud (1969) sold for $142.4 million at Christie’s, setting an artist’s record and becoming the most expensive work ever sold at auction. Less than a month later, the massive contemporary masterpiece turned up on loan, not at a modern-day art mecca like New York’s Museum of Modern Art (as Edvard Munch’s The Scream did), but on the opposite end of the US, at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon. The painting, which remained on view there through early April, was loaned by its new owner Elaine Wynn, ex-wife of casino mogul and top collector Steve Wynn. Mrs. Wynn, a resident of Nevada, was reportedly entitled to save more than $10 million in taxes by first parking the painting at the Portland Art Museum before bringing it to her home state.

On Wednesday, May 14, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York garnered $364 million, falling well within the auction’s pre-sale estimate of $337 million to $474 million. Of the 79 lots offered, 12 failed to find buyers. While the auction fell short of Christie’s monumental $475 million sale, which took place the evening before, new records were set for twelve artists at Sotheby’s, including Julian Schnabel, Wade Guyton, Rosemarie Trockel, Dan Flavin, Matthew Barney, and Keith Haring.

The top lot of the night was Andy Warhol’s “Six Self-Portraits,” which had resided in a private collection since its creation in 1986. The portraits, which are among the last works created by the pioneering Pop artist, sold for $30.1 million (estimate: $25 million to $35 million). The Warhol works were trailed by Gerhard Richter’s oil-on-canvas painting “Blaud” (1988), which sold to a telephone bidder for $28.7 million (estimate: $25 million to $35 million) and Jeff Koons’ mirror polished stainless steel sculpture with transparent color coating titled “Popeye” (1988), which fetched $28.2 million (estimate on request). The 6 ½-foot tall sculpture was purchased by billionaire casino tycoon and art collector Steve Wynn, who plans to display the work in his Las Vegas casino.

Christie’s sold $134.6 million of contemporary art in New York in an hour as international buyers from 26 countries chased after works including Andy Warhol’s electric chair silkscreen and Martin Kippenberger’s slouching man in his underwear.

Titled “If I Live I’ll See You Tuesday,” the auction yesterday surpassed its high target of $124.1 million as 11 artist records were set, including those for Richard Prince, On Kawara, Wade Guyton, Dan Colen and Kippenberger. Of the 35 lots offered, all but one found buyers. Similar to last week’s Impressionist and modern art auctions, Asian collectors competed fiercely, winning at least two of the top 10 lots, Christie’s said.