Edvard Munch’s The Scream could become the most expensive painting ever sold at auction today if predictions that the work could fetch up to US$150 million are to be believed.
The vibrant pastel, one of four versions by the Scandinavian artist and the only privately owned, is estimated to sell for US$80 million when it goes under the hammer today at Sotheby’s in New York.
But London-based art expert Nicolai Frahm, of Frahm Ltd, believes the price could soar much higher.
photo: REUTERS
“I think it will go to US$150 million,” he said in a telephone interview, which would smash the auction record of US$106.5 million set by Pablo Picasso’s “Nude, green leaves and bust” in 2010.
“This is the first time we have ever had such an iconic work up for sale,” he added. “This painting is way more famous than the artist ever was.”
Other independent art market experts have suggested a final price of around $125 million.
Sotheby’s has gone to extraordinary lengths to safeguard the work. It is under 24-hour guard at its New York headquarters, where it is housed in a specially constructed mini-gallery behind a tension wire.
Two of the four Screams were stolen from museums in 1994 and 2004, but both were later recovered. Petter Olsen, whose father was a friend and neighbor of Munch’s, is selling an 1895 version, planning to fund a museum with the proceeds.
Sotheby’s said it set its estimate intuitively.
“US$100 million feels like it might be a barrier,” said David Norman, worldwide
co-chairman of Impressionist and modern art. “But pictures like this — where they end up going is a matter of momentum. It really is hard to predict. You’re working at determining the price for one of the most unique and rare images of the past 150 years.”
Norman said many art enthusiasts had expressed tremendous confidence in a sale price well beyond the pre-sale estimate. The painting’s fame could push its price into the stratosphere.
“Occasionally there is a piece like this that is so famed that individuals who don’t normally collect say ‘I want one of the greatest paintings in the world,’” said Norman.
Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s head of Impressionist and modern art in New York, noted that The Scream had only become more relevant, and ubiquitous, in recent years, in the context of geo-political and economic turmoil worldwide.
“Art has become extremely sexy. It’s become a front-page sensation and gone into the mainstream,” said Frahm. “Many more people look at art than they did 10 years ago.”
Although most of the attention is focused on The Scream, both Sotheby’s and Christie’s, whose sale started yesterdat, are boasting many other works worth hundreds of millions of US dollars, especially in the post-war and contemporary arena.
“We could easily see new records,” said Frahm.
Both houses are selling works from important private collections. Sotheby is handling the collection of financier Ted Forstmann, and the US$100 million abstract expressionist-dominated Pincus collection will go under the hammer at Christie’s.
“There’s such a richness of offerings,” said Christie’s Americas president and chairman Marc Porter.
“Our abstract expressionist works are the best in 20 years,” he said. “We have the best Rothko in a decade, the most important Pollack in 15 years.”
Christie’s Impressionist sale has a pre-sale estimate of up to US$140 million. Its star lot, the recently rediscovered Cezanne watercolor study Card Players, could sell for US$20 million.
Its post-war sale, which is expected to take in as much as US$350 million, is led by Philip Rothko’s Orange, Red, Yellow abstract, which is expected to fetch about US$40 million, and Yves Klein’s FC 1 (Fire-Color 1), estimated to sell for about US$35 million.
A group of six Richters should fetch more than US$40 million.
At Sotheby’s, Pablo Picasso’s Dora Maar portrait, Femme assise dans un fauteuil, is expected to fetch US$25 million. Works by Chaim Soutine are also poised to draw strong prices.
Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis, with a pre-sale estimate of up to US$50 million, is leading Sotheby’s contemporary sale and Lichtenstein’s Sleeping Girl and Francis Bacon’s Figure Writing Reflected in Mirror, could each fetch up to US$40 million.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and