A 1932 painting by Pablo Picasso set a world art auction record on Tuesday when it sold for a staggering US$106.4 million, the auction house Christie’s announced in New York.
The Spanish master’s painting, Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust), had been expected to bring in US$70 million to US$90 million but soared past that figure to eclipse the record set in February, when Alberto Giacometti’s Walking Man I sculpture sold in London for US$104.3 million.
The sale — to an unidentified buyer — narrowly beat out the previous record of US$104 million paid out for another Picasso piece, Garcon a la Pipe, in New York in 2004.
PHOTO: REUTERS/CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD
The large, sensual painting auctioned on Tuesday has been exhibited just once in public since 1961, and was a highlight of the collection of assembled by the late Los Angeles art patrons Frances and Sidney Brody.
The vibrant depiction of Picasso’s mistress and frequent subject, Marie-Therese Walter, was the top priced work at Christie’s sale of Impressionist and modern art.
The sale netted $335.5 million for the auction house.
Tuesday’s sale marked the beginning of New York’s art auction season, and confirmed the renewed confidence of art dealers who said last week ahead of major spring auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary works that the financial crisis was largely behind them.
Art experts were said to be watching Tuesday’s auction closely for signs that the art market was indeed clawing its way back.
With Wall Street profits back from the 2007 to 2008 financial crisis, the auctions will feature a string of top-end works aimed at big-spending collectors.
The Brody collection also features works by Giacometti and Henri Matisse. The New York Times reported that Christie’s and Sotheby’s battled for four months to win the Brody sale, with the winner coming away after offering an undisclosed guaranteed sum to be paid to the sellers, whatever the result of the auction. This revives a practice largely abandoned when the late 2008 financial meltdown hit the art market.
Sotheby’s was scheduled to auction a string of masterpieces yesterday, including a Matisse called Bouquet pour le 14 juillet 1919, which could fetch between US$18 million and US$25 million.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
RSS