S.I. Newhouse Collected Magazines — and His Trove of the ‘First and Best’ of Modern Art Fetches $630 Million

The auctioning at Christie’s on Monday of 16 works from the collection of S.I Newhouse Jr. for some $630 million — beating projections by nearly $200 million — amounts to posthumous vindication of the enigmatic press baron’s taste for the crème de la crème of modern art. One art adviser, Stephanie Armstrong, reckoned that the sale was “all killer and no filler.”At a moment when New York City can somehow boast of shows byMarcel Duchamp andRaphael, this blaze of brilliance can’t help but prompt a smidgen of regret that this collection will disappear from view. The identities of the buyers’ of the Newhouse collection are not immediately available. Christie’s global chairman of 20th and 21st century art, Max Carter, calls the Newhouse horde “first and best of everything.” Newhouse’s widow, Victoria, tells the Times that she is putting the art to auction because the “time has come to start downsizing. It’s an effort to simplify my life.” Also downsizing is Condé Nast, the magazine empire that one chronicler reckons was the “media dynasty that reshaped America.” Newhouse inherited Condé Nast from his father Samuel, who charted a course to Park Avenue grandeur from Lower East Side tenements. The Newhouse’s still own Vogue, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, but have already parted with several tranches of art that have gone for some $415 million prior to this week’s auction. The estate privately sold Andy Warhol’s “Orange Marilyn” from 1964, to the Citadel founder Ken Griffin for $235 million. ‘Number 7a, 1948’ by Jackson Pollock. Via Christie’sThe collection’s centerpiece is Jackson Pollack’s “Number 7A, 1948.” It sold for some $181 million after seven minutes of bidding. When Pollock was 36 he painted the work in his barn near East Hampton. This critic sees something like a poured and drizzled tattoo or DNA filament exploded on the skin’s surface. Red pinpricks and wet grooves compete for attention with spidery lines. The painting has been unseen for half a century ago — it hung in Newhouse’s dining room.Displayed at Christie’s as an idol of old was “Danaïde,” a golden head sculpted by Constance Brancusi in 1913 that garnered $107 million. The title is Greek but the piece’s style is Egyptian, delivering a modernist Ramses or Nefertiti for the early 20th century. The Romanian sculptor once declared that “For art to be free and universal, you must create like a god, command like a king and execute like a slave.” Pieces by Pablo Picasso offer a view into Cubism at an embryonic stage. “Homme à la guitare,” which sold for $51 million, was once owned by Gertrude Stein. Even more memorable is “Tête de femme,” a study for the famed Les demoiselles d’Avignon that hangs in savage splendor a mere five minute walk away at the Museum of Modern Art. A lush Matisse, “Robe noire et robe violette,” fetched $35 million.‘Tête de femme’ by Pablo Picasso, 1913. Via Christie’sAnother compelling cranium is a painting by Lucien Freud of a life mask of the poet William Blake. That visage, startlingly detailed, floats against a pitch black background that is as chilling a rendering of the afterlife as can be imagined. Andy Warhol’s “Do It Yourself (Violin),” which went for $26 million, is a more cheerful and gorgeously incomplete portrait of a guitar — a call back to Picasso — against a paint by numbers grid that telegraphs a Pop puckishness. “Portrait of Madame K” by Juan Miro remakes the ancient genre for the Surrealists and reached $53 million. Christie’s hopes that an arresting Mondrian, with an orange square that resembles a segment of a chessboard amplified by acid, achieves a bid in the same stratosphere. “Gray Target,” by Jasper Johns, is an exploration of that shade as both color and idea, akin to what the poet Andrew Marvell describes as a “green thought in a green shade.” It sold for nearly $29 million.‘Study for Portrait I (after the Life Mask of William Blake)’, by Francis Bacon, 1955. Via Christie’sThe most striking work seen by this critic at Christie’s was not from Newhouse’s collection but instead from another one at auction this week, that of Agnes Gund’s. She bought Mark Rothko’s “No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe)” directly from the artist during a visit to his studio in 1967. Sold for some $98 million, the painting’s verdant background is slashed by a line of red that looks like a wound or a warning. No single work in the Newhouse lot matched the $236 million paid at Sotheby’s last year by an undisclosed bidder for Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer,” the record for a work of modern art. The record for any work at auction is $450 million for a painting purportedly by Leonardo da Vinci. It could be that for all the thrill of abstraction, it is portraits — faces — that command the ultimate premiums.

S.I. Newhouse Collected Magazines — and His Trove of the ‘First and Best’ of Modern Art Fetches $630 Million

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