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.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless