Man Ray Estate Plays Chicken with Getty in WSJ
The Man Ray estate wants out. The executor, Eric Browner, is 86 years old and the heirs would like to see some cash in their pockets. The problem is that the estate was valued at $20m half a decade ago, before the art market turned its remorseless gaze fully on Surrealism. The Wall Street Journal sums it up:
Today, Mr. Browner manages 15,000 copyrights for the artist and oversees licensing contracts worth roughly $300,000 a year—from Mandarin Hotel headboards embroidered with Man Ray’s images to Zara’s taupe-colored Man Ray shirts. The trust’s proceeds are split among a dozen heirs.
Mr. Browner said he’s been feeling family pressure lately to sell the archive before he dies. He has had discussions with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington; both museums said they demurred [...] Last month, a few curators from the Getty Research Institute came out to the trust, said Marcia Reed, the institute’s curator and head of collection development. Ms. Reed said she is “very interested” in the artist, but her team hasn’t yet presented its findings to the Getty board. [...]
The trust’s decision to sell Man Ray’s studio contents has already irked some in the art establishment. Mr. Baum, the Surrealist dealer, dismissed Mr. Browner’s target price as “crazy,” given that “it’s the residue of an archive,” whose top works were cherry-picked years ago by auction houses. Other dealers who have looked through the archive peg its value closer to $6 million. The Browners stand by the appraisal.
Merry Foresta, an independent curator who worked on a 1988 Man Ray retrospective at the Smithsonian, said she worries the trust will be tempted to break up the archive and sell off its parts if they can’t eventually get their asking price. “The archive’s value for researchers hinges on it staying together,” she said.
The Surreal Selling of Man Ray (Wall Street Journal)
Basquiat and Guarantees Bolster Phillips Sale
Katya Kazakina had these observations on Bloomberg:
- “Things that are desirable and iconic sell very well,” said Simone Battisti, who recently joined the Gladstone Gallery in New York and Brussels as associate director. “Others don’t.”
- The seller of Claes Oldenburg’s humorous sculpture “Popsicle, Hamburger, Price” (1961-1962) wasn’t as lucky. The work sold for $458,500, a 27 percent decline from the seller’s purchase price of $632,000 at Christie’s in 2006.
- there was plenty of wonga around for the Willem de Kooning’s handsome, 80-by-70-inch cover lot abstraction, “Untitled VI” (1975), which sold to a telephone bidder for $12,402,500 (est. $10-15 million). New York dealer Robert Mnuchin was the underbidder. The guaranteed de Kooning last sold at auction in May 2000 at Sotheby’s New York for $1,380,750.
- “Mao” (1973), which sold to New York dealer Hugo Nathan of Simon Dickinson Gallery for $10,386,500 (est. $9-12 million). It last sold at auction in November 1991 at Sotheby’s New York for a hard-to-believe $165,000.
- Twombly’s “Untitled (Bolsena),” a canvas of scrawled white lines painted in 1969, was bought by a lone bidder for $5.5 million, or $6.2 million with fees; its low estimate had been $6 million. Still, it was a big price considering that the last time it was on the market, at Sotheby’s in 2004, it sold for $2.9 million.
Basquiat, Schutz Boost $87 Million Phillips de Pury Sale (Bloomberg)
Phillips de Pury & Company Nets $86.9 Million, Crowned by a Record $16.3-Million Basquiat (Artinfo)
Basquiat Painting Brings $16.3m at Phillips Sale (New York Times)
Sotheby’s Loses Head of Private Sales
Just when the auction houses have been emphasizing private sales as the futures of their business, Carol Vogel reports that Sotheby’s has just lost their head of private sales:
Stephane C. Connery, who has been one of Sotheby’s biggest rainmakers, significantly increasing the company profits as worldwide director of its private sales, has resigned. He plans to start dealing privately.
“I’ve always hoped to see if I could stand on my own two feet, and after 20 years at Sotheby’s, I think the time has finally come,” Mr. Connery said.
Inside Art: Resignation at Sotheby’s (New York Times)
Cashing In On Betty Freeman
If this Roy Lichtenstein work that sold tonight at Phillips de Pury looks familiar that’s because it was part of Betty Freeman’s extraordinary sale at Christie’s in May of 2009 where an important collection served to beat back the misery of the credit crisis and financial panic gripping the world.
This Lichtenstein made just a hair under $2m at that sale. It was flipped tonight for a number near the low estimate—$3.44m but still enough to generate a solid 50% return in three years time.
Phillips de Pury NY Cont Eve = $89.9m
- Jean-Michel Basquiat ($8-12m) $16.3m
- Willem de Kooning Untitled VI ($10-15m) $12.4m
- Christopher Wool, Untitled (S69) ($2.5-3.5m) $4m
- Joan Mitchell, Sunflowers ($1-1.5m) $1.65m
- Andreas Gursky, Prada II ($500-700k) $782,500
- Dana Schutz, Death Comes to Us All ($300-400k) $482,500
- George Condo, The Three Graces ($350-450k) $458,500
- Sterling Ruby, Kiss Trap Kismet ($150-200k) $206,500
- Seth Price, Repossessed Audi ($50-70k) $92,500
Lot 6 Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, $16,322,500
Lot 19 Willem de Kooning Untitled VI, $12,402,500
Lot 8 Andy Warhol, Mao, $10,386,500
Lot 4 Andy Warhol, Gun, $7,026,500
Lot 25 Cy Twombly, Untitled (Bolsena), $6,242,500
Lot17 Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke Nude, $5,458,500
Lot 3 Christopher Wool, Untitled (S 69), $4,002,500
Lot10 Roy Lichtenstein, Still Life with Cash Box, $3,442,500
Lot 5 Maurizio Cattelan, Daddy Daddy, $2,546,500
Lot 14 Andy Warhol, Statue of Liberty, $2,434,500
Artist World Records:
Lot 6 Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, $16,322,500
Lot 42 Seth Price, Untitled, $92,500
Lot 44 Dana Schutz, Death Comes to All, $482,500
The Sherman Market Has a Brain
You’re not seeing double. These are two different lots of Cindy Sherman‘s Untitled #94. The two works were on offer in very different settings. Phillips de Pury sold the one on top tonight in its evening sale with a $1-1.5m estimate. (Zach Miner must have been pretty hot for the picture.) The other went into Christie’s day sale with a $300-500k estimate. The folks at Christie’s clearly had bigger fish to fry.
The disparate estimates caused some confusion among observers. (We had assumed the works were different sizes at first and said so in print.) But no matter how battered and scattered the Cindy Sherman market may have become this week, the wisdom of the crowd asserted itself. Both works sold for the exact same price: $722,500 with premium.
Heirs Enlist WSJ to Find Museum Willing to Pay $20m for Man Ray
The Wall Street Journal hangs out a shingle for Man Ray’s estate hoping to entice a museum to pay up for what probably wouldn’t make the same price tag parceled out on the market.
Sotheby’s NY Cont Day = $63.9m
- Alexander Calder’s standing mobile The Orange Table which has been in the same family collection for nearly 70 years. The 1943 piece sold for $2,546,500 – the highest price achieved for a work in a Contemporary Art Day sale at Sotheby’s since May 2008.
- Gerhard Richter, whose Abstraktes Bild (595-3) from 1986 continued a series of strong prices for the artist when it sold for $2,098,500
- Andy Warhol Jackie from 1964 beating the estimate to fetch $1,202,500
- Andy Warhol, 1963 Ambulance Disaster also exceeding the estimate to sell for $962,500.
- Takashi Murakami, Kanye Bear which comfortably exceeded the high estimate to sell for $1,202,500
- David Hockney’s Palm Reflected in Pool, Arizona which sold for $962,500, well over the $250/300,000 estimate.
- Jean Dubuffet, Arabe gesticulante selling for 1,258,500, many multiples of the $50/70,000 estimate
Sotheby’s Somnolent Sale Still Scores Big
The Master, Judd Tully, had the night sewn up with his excellent reporting and background:
- “I felt everybody was falling asleep tonight,” said Manfredi della Gherardesca of the London based MDG Fine Arts Ltd. “There was nothing here I would kill for.” Still Gherardesca snared Yves Klein’s “Untitled Monogold” in gold leaf on pressed wood board from 1959 for $1,538,500 (est. $700-900,000), a work which last sold at Sotheby’s London in February 2001 for £201,500 ($293,988) and Damien Hirst’s butterfly-encrusted and gloss paint tondo, “Awakening” (2007) for $1,650,500. Asked about the 84-inch diameter Hirst, Gherardesca said it was “playroom decoration.”
- Francis Bacon oil-on-canvas entry, “Study for a Portrait” (1978), measuring just 14 by 12 inches, sold to New York collector Donald Bryant for $4,282,500 (est. $4-6 million). It last sold at Sotheby’s London in February 2008 for £2,036,500 ($4,047,098), a wash for the seller and a possible boon for the newbie Bacon collector.
- Arshile Gorky abstraction, “Khorkom” (ca. 1938), which sold to New York dealerJack Tilton for $2,770,500 (est. $3-4 million). “People are looking for the trendy thing and not the connoisseurship thing,” said Tilton, expressing delight in his purchase. “They’re not a lot of those early Gorkys.”
- “There’s a little adjustment in the Warhol market,” Benrimon said. “It’s been flat since last year.”
- “Well, it wasn’t that impressive anyway,” dealer Emilio Steinberger (whose gallery, Haunch of Venison, is owned by Christie’s) said after the sale. “Did you see it? It was really more like one-and-a-half Elvises.”
- “The quality was so-so,” said dealer David Nahmad, who nonetheless walked off with one of the evening’s Calders, which sold for a hammer price of $1.2 million. “It’s all about merchandise. Christie’s was very lucky to get the Pincus Collection. It’s getting very hard to find quality material in any category.”
- There appears to be an endless appetite for high-end abstract paintings. A classic 1970 blackboard painting by Twombly, “Untitled (New York City),” covered in rolling sweeps of white scrawl, was expected to reach $15 million to $20 million. It sold to Stavaros Merjos, a Los Angeles collector, for $15.5 million, or $17.4 million with fees, just above its low estimate but nevertheless a record for the artist at auction.
Sotheby’s Banks a Sturdy $266.6 Million, As Bacon and Lichtenstein Tie for Top Lot at $44 Million Each (Artinfo)
Record Lichtenstein Sells at $267 Mln Sotheby’s Auction (Bloomberg)
Lichtenstein and Bacon Lead $266 M. Sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s (Gallerist NY)
$44.8 Million, Going Twice at Sotheby’s (New York Times)
