Another Record Week?
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After record-setting sales of Impressionist and Modern art last week, including the highest-earning auction to date, the soaring postwar and contemporary market now takes center stage at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.
Hoping for a continued surge in prices in the field, both houses have packed sales with key Abstract Expressionist, Pop Art, and Minimalist works. Along with painting and sculpture by postwar giants like Willem de Kooning, David Smith, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, and Roy Lichtenstein, both houses also feature works from the past 10 years by noted artists including Damien Hirst, Lisa Yuskavage, Luc Tuymans, and Peter Doig.
It’s a batch of iconic Andy Warhols at both houses that are set to be the highlights of the week, along with stellar lots by Brice Marden, Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock, Gerhard Richter, and a masterpiece by Francis Bacon.
Christie’s, which set the record for the highest grossing single auction in history at $491.5 million last Tuesday, is expecting its evening sale to become the most valuable ever in the field, with an estimate of between $160 million and $220 million. Sotheby’s own evening sale combines pieces from an important Belgian private collection with a blue-chip roster of recent work that is expected to bring in between $109.3 million and $148.1 million.
One of the centerpieces of the Sotheby’s sale tomorrow is a visceral portrait of a reclining female nude by Francis Bacon, “Version No. 2 of Lying Figure With Hypodermic Syringe,” from the prized collection of the furniture manufacturer Roger Vanthournout (est. $9 million–$12 million), being sold by his widow, Josette.
The large-scale bright abstraction by Gerhard Richter,”Maria (544-4),”a structured composition of loose painterly brushstrokes, is another cornerstone of the Belgian collector’s estate sale (est. $2.5 million–$3.5 million), which also includes works by Piero Manzoni, Carl Andre, and Donald Judd, and a Jean-Michel Basquiat inspired by the artist’s sojourn to Italy in the early 1980s ($1.5 million–$2 million).
Sotheby’s is also auctioning several of Roy Lichtenstein’s trademark Pop Art canvases. Both “Head —Yellow and Black” (est. $8 million–$10 million) and “Black and White Sunrise” (est. $6 million–$8 million) feature the artist’s signature Benday Dots, synthetic graphic style, and use of mass-media source material.
Among several works by Warhol on the block, including a colorful Campbell’s Soup can (est. $2 million–$3 million), is a 1964 selfportrait. Based on a photo-booth image of the artist, it sets Warhol’s silk-screened likeness against a rich red background (est. $3.5 million–$4.5 million). One of Warhol’s “Flowers” paintings from 1964, based on a color photograph of six hibiscus blossoms, is estimated to fetch $4 million–$6 million.
Regarded as one of his finest paintings from the late 1970s, de Kooning’s “Untitled XXX” is an expressive textured abstraction, hinting at sky and clouds with its rich blue and white colors and lavish, fluid brushstrokes (estimate $7.5 million-9.5 million).
A monochromatic Brice Marden canvas from the late 1960s, examples of which are currently on view in his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, is likely to set a new record for the artist. “Au Centre,” a two-panel gray painting with a rich waxy surface, carries a high estimate of $4.5 million. That would surpass the artist’s current record of $2.98 million achieved at Christie’s last May.
Other highlights include two Agnes Martin works (both in the $1.5 million–$2 million range), Chuck Close’s portrait of the composer Philip Glass (est. $3 million–$4 million), an important work from Rothko’s mythological period (est. $1.8 million–$2.5 million), and a David Smith sculpture from his Voltri series, one of the 27 welded metal sculptures the artist completed in just over a month in 1962 (est. $5 million–$7 million).
Christie’s leads its superlative evening sale Wednesday, poised to be the highest grossing on record, with eight Warhols of its own, including one of the rarest and most significant to come up at auction in some years.
Painted at the height of détente with China, the artist’s large-scale portrait of Mao mines the Chairman’s cult of personality. The series, of which the painting is one of the largest, heralded Warhol’s return to painting after working mostly in film in the late 1960s. Sold by the Swiss-based Daros Collection, the iconic work gets its own separate small catalog and is expected to realize between $8 million and $12 million.
The sale’s other blockbuster Warhol is “Orange Marilyn” (1962), a three-time auction veteran. An early example of one of Warhol’s most famous series, made shortly after Monroe’s death, the painting sold for $3.75 million in May 2001 at Christie’s, having been previously sold for $1 million less in 1998. It now carries a formidable high-estimate of $15 million. Another, even larger painting from the series holds the current auction record for a Warhol, $17.3 million at Sotheby’s in 1998.
Other Warhols on offer at Christie’s include “Sixteen Jackies,” (estimate upon request) and his eponymous four-panel portrait of the novelist Judith Green (estimate $2 million–$3 million).
Like its rival, Christie’s also has remarkable paintings by Lichtenstein, Richter, and de Kooning on the block.
Estimated to sell for about $15 million, the latter’s “Untitled XXV” is a masterpiece from 1977, one of the artist’s most fervent creative periods, also represented in the Sotheby’s sale. An earlier work from the mid-1950s, “Sagamore,” is expected to bring in between $4 million and $6 million.
Clyfford Still’s “1947-R-No.1” (est. $5 million–$7 million) is perhaps the most significant painting by the artist to come up for auction in decades, and has been in the same private collection for 35 years. The expansive color and tactile quality of that painting is echoed in Gerhard Richter’s “Tisch” (1982), an abstraction with an estimate of between $2.8 million and $3.5 million.
Christie’s is also offering Roy Lichtenstein’s “Yellow and White Brushstrokes,” (est. $7 million–$9 million), and a small but startling Jackson Pollock from 1950, “Number 21,” featuring swirling bursts of color set against a metallic background (est. $7 million–$9 million). A monumental Pollock painting from two years earlier made headlines last week when it was reportedly sold for $140 million by music-mogul David Geffen to an undisclosed buyer.
Christie’s contemporary offerings rival that of Sotheby’s, with important works by Marlene Dumas, Lisa Yuskavage, Andreas Gursky, and a set of skeleton filled vitrines by Damien Hirst (est. $1.5 million–$2 million).
And in a sure sign that Asian art has crossed over to the high end of the contemporary market, Christie’s is including two works by leading Chinese artists, Zhang Xiaogang’s “A Big Family Series No.16” (est.$800,000 million–$1.2 million) and Cai Guo-Qiang’s “Two Lions” (estimate $300,000–$400,000) in the evening sale.
Postwar masters and cutting-edge contemporary art fill the day sessions Wednesday and Thursday, with both houses expecting high returns on quality works by several generations of artists, from Josef Albers to Martin Eder, Tal R, and Elizabeth Peyton. And a 30-year-old Columbia MFA grad, Kevin Zucker, will see his work go up for auction for the first time in one of the most robust markets contemporary art has ever seen.