For decades now, auction houses have sold challenging works of art. There have been arcane, ancient sculptures, canvases by little-known artists, and bizarre objects like glass cabinets filled with medical supplies or cigarette butts. But at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips de Pury, the art for sale at the big auctions this season, which began yesterday, requires little thought. Even those without much knowledge of art history will recognize Andy Warhol’s haunting self-portrait with his spiky fright wig or Jeff Koons’ lovable sculpture of a Pink Panther being hugged by a buxom blonde or the classic pink-and-red abstract canvas that shrieks Mark Rothko.
These instantly recognizable images spell “wall power,” a well-worn art-world phrase that describes an artwork that telegraphs its owner’s wealth. Often these trophy purchases are flaunted in the entrance of a McMansion or over a living-room fireplace or in an office-building lobby. Sometimes, however, prized art will disappear into private collections where their super-rich owners show them off to only their super-rich friends.
Buyers today are a far broader group than they were a decade ago. As pockets of new money continue to be made in Asia, Russia and the Middle East, buyers from these places are becoming major players in the auction arena. And their tastes tend toward the unsubtle.
Photo: Bloomberg
“In order to appeal to today’s global marketplace you have to have iconic art that translates in every culture,” said Tobias Meyer, who runs Sotheby’s contemporary art worldwide.
Or as Brett Gorvy, Meyer’s counterpart at Christie’s, explains, “It’s got to be something with high impact, a wham-bang painting with everything in front of you.”
That’s not to say these buyers are naive. Most of them employ advisers who do their homework, researching a work’s provenance, studying its condition and scrutinizing the estimates to see if they are in line with recent comparable sales. A year ago, the art market was bracing for a 1932 Picasso from a Los Angeles estate to break the US$100 million mark. Anything less would have been a disappointment. So when that painting — a sensual image of the artist’s mistress Marie-Therese Walter reclining naked — brought $106.5 million, becoming the most expensive painting ever sold at auction, it was a validation that once-in-a-lifetime images go for gigantic prices.
Photo: Bloomberg
This season there is nothing for sale that is as much of a blockbuster as that Picasso. Expectations are lower — if something goes for more than US$40 million it will be considered a giant price — and auction houses had to work harder to get the best examples they could find by today’s most popular artists. The problem is that few major estates have come up for sale, and that most collectors are reluctant to part with their prized artwork, fearing that the world’s financial markets are far more unstable than the value of the art on their walls.
“It was a challenge from start to finish,” said Conor Jordan, head of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department in New York. “A-plus material is in small supply, but if something is of good quality and correctly priced, there is no shortage of buyers.”
Sotheby’s won two groups of estate material heavy on wall-power names, adding an extra evening to its schedule. On Monday it will hold a two-part evening auction devoted to property that belonged to Allan Stone, the New York dealer who died in 2006. The evening will begin with classic works by artists Stone sold and kept over the years, like Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, John Chamberlain and Joseph Cornell. The second part will include only paintings and drawings by Wayne Thiebaud, an artist Stone represented for decades. That auction will include some of Thiebaud’s signature images like Various Cakes, from 1981, rows of cakes with icings so thick they look as though they could be licked off the canvas.
Sotheby’s is also selling property belonging to Dodie Rosekrans, the San Francisco socialite and philanthropist who died in November, including three Picasso paintings and one of Warhol’s round canvases of Jackie.
As has been true during the past few seasons, Warhols are for sale everywhere. This spring there are two different self-portraits that he created more than 20 years apart and some of his celebrity images, including one of his Elizabeth Taylor paintings. In the past, prized Warhols have topped expectations, but just how long will his magic last?
Although he is obvious catnip for today’s new collectors, that’s the question no one dares to answer.
Artist: Jeff Koons
Title: Pink Panther
Auction House: Sotheby’s
Estimate: US$20 million to US$30 million
Since 1988, when Jeff Koons made this outrageous porcelain figure of a bare-breasted blonde hugging the Pink Panther, it has become one of his most popular works, along with Balloon Dog and Rabbit. The sculpture is one of three, along with an artist’s proof. One of these appeared in a gilded chamber at the Chateau de Versailles near Paris in 2008.
The owner is the publisher Benedikt Taschen, who has collected and sold Koons sculptures before. In 2007 he sold Koons’ Blue Diamond, a giant blue diamond fashioned from shiny steel, at Christie’s for US$11.8 million; two years later he sold Koons’ Large Vase of Flowers, also at Christie’s, for US$5.7 million.
In 1999 Christie’s sold one of the Pink Panther sculptures to Peter Brant, the newsprint magnate, for US$1.8 million, then a record price for a Koons work. Now Sotheby’s is auctioning the artist’s proof. Besides Brant’s Pink Panther, the Museum of Modern Art in New York owns one, as does the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Artist: Picasso
Title: Femmes Lisant (Deux Personnages)
Auction House: Sotheby’s
Estimate: US$25 million to US$35 million
It used to be that dealers followed the success of the auction houses, adjusting their prices so they were consistent with the large sums fetched in the salesrooms and then organizing exhibitions of artists after they became winners at auctions.
Now things seem to be working the other way around. Knowing that the Gagosian Gallery’s big spring show this year is Picasso and Marie-Therese: L’Amour Fou, an exhibition that explores the artist and his mistress Marie-Therese Walter in one of its Chelsea spaces, one savvy seller decided to jump on the Picasso bandwagon and sell a painting he has owned for 30 years.
Executed in 1934, it depicts two women who John Richardson, Picasso’s biographer, said are Walter and her sister, Genevieve, reading. The canvas is one of several paintings inspired by the artist’s time in Boisgeloup, a town outside of Paris. It is colorful, sensually distorted and instantly recognizable as a Picasso.
The Sotheby’s catalog says the painting comes from “a distinguished private collection,” without naming names. Picasso experts say they believe it belongs to Morton Janklow, the Manhattan literary agent.
Artist: Warhol
Title: Liz #5 (Early Colored Liz)
Auction House: Phillips de Pury
Estimate: US$20 million to US$30 million
Elizabeth Taylor had not been dead 24 hours before experts at Phillips de Pury were trumpeting their plans to sell this image of her, one of 13 paintings in various colors that Warhol executed between October and November 1963. The actor Hugh Grant sold a turquoise Liz at Christie’s in 2007 for US$23.5 million.
The dealer Ileana Sonnabend owned this painting for decades, keeping it in her private collection. But in 2008, a year after her death, her heirs sold US$600 million worth of art to pay estate taxes and this Warhol was among a group of paintings that were said to have been sold to Larry Gagosian, the Manhattan dealer. The deal, according to those familiar with the transaction, is thought to have been financed by several collectors, including the hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen. It is Cohen who is selling the painting now.
Cohen chose Phillips because the auction house was able to give him the largest guarantee, an undisclosed sum promised to the seller regardless of the outcome of the sale, which is being financed by an outside party.
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