A nude portrait by Amedeo Modigliani on Monday sold for US$157.2 million at Sotheby’s, the fourth-highest price for any work of art at auction, but failing to set a new record for the artist.
Sotheby’s had estimated Nu couche (sur le cote gauche) to sell for more than US$150 million, which made the 1917 oil painting the highest-estimated work of art in auction history.
However, in merely meeting expectations and failing to set a record, even for a Modigliani, the canvas fell short of a handful of recently auctioned trophy works, most notably Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which soared to US$450.3 million at rival Christie’s in November last year after several top-tier collectors competed furiously.
Photo: EPA-EFE
That work carried a presale estimate of about US$100 million.
Sotheby’s was quick to note, while the auction was still live, that Nu couche had achieved the highest price of any work in the 274-year-old auction house’s history.
In a sign of soaring prices at the art market’s highest echelons, the same work sold for US$27 million in 2003.
However, it could not be denied that only a handful of collectors at most bid for the work, which fell short of the US$170.4 million record for a Modigliani set in 2015.
Officials were relegated to characterizing the sale as “measured,” a tacit admission that it was devoid of the free-spending frenzy that has marked recent auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
“It was not an exuberant room,” Sotheby’s cohead of Impressionist and modern art Simon Shaw told reporters afterward, but added that “it was an ordered, efficient sale, which achieved a total within its estimated range.”
The auction took in US$318.3 million, just beating the US$307.4 million low presale estimate. Of the 45 lots on offer, 71 percent found buyers.
Other highlights included Pablo Picasso’s Le Repos, which achieved US$36.9 million and beat its high estimate of US$35 million, and Claude Monet’s Matinee sur la Seine, which fetched US$20.55 million, at the low end of the US$18 million to US$25 million estimate.
Georgia O’Keefe’s Lake George With White Birch soared to US$11.3 million, or nearly twice the high estimate, but another Picasso, Femme au chien, estimated at US$12 million to US$18 million, failed to sell when no bids exceeded US$11 million.
The spring auctions were continue to continue yesterday, when Christie’s holds its Impressionist and modern art sale.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not