THE top estimate was £600 but Freddie Mercury’s silver moustache comb sold for a whopping £152,400 at the final day of the Queen frontman’s series of online sales at Sotheby’s in London yesterday. The little comb by Tiffany and Co. ignited the public interest at the month long exhibition at Sotheby’s before the series of Freddie Mercury sales.
An Era Defined is the title of the sales of the Emily Fisher Landau Collection at Sotheby’s in New York on November 8 and 9 next. The collection is synonymous with connoisseurship and quality, and also speaks to Mrs. Fisher Landau’s voracious and instinctive approach to collecting. From Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and Fernand Léger, through to Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns, alongside Mark Tansey and Glenn Ligon, the collection traces the greatest achievements of 20th-century art, in each case through key masterpiece examples. Following a series of international exhibition some 120 exceptional works from the collection, estimated to bring well over $400 million, will be offered for sale at Sotheby’s.
Mrs. Fisher Landau’s collecting journey began in the late 1960s with the purchase of a striking Alexander Calder mobile and with a chance encounter with a poster advertising a forthcoming Josef Albers show at Pace Gallery, from which three major acquisitions followed. Mrs. Fisher Landau began to put together a major ensemble of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Jean Arp, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Paul Klee and Louise Nevelson among others. All were complemented, in later years, by the work of artists she came to know and patronize directly, many of whom she collected in depth. Few collectors have been as committed to building relationships with artists as she: from post-war titans such as Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns to artists at the vanguard in the 21st century, such as Glenn Ligon and Mark Tansey.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, and over the course of the next four decades, Mrs. Fisher Landau was deeply involved with the Whitney Museum in so many ways: a member of the acquisition committees, she also endowed the Museum’s famous Whitney Biennial exhibitions and in 2010 made a landmark donation of nearly 400 works, which was subsequently exhibited under the title “Legacy: The Emily Fisher Landau Collection”. The fourth floor of the Breuer building remains named in her honour.
Fancy a clothes rack for around half a million? Christie’s has just the one – a 17th-century magnificent and extremely rare huanghuali version – at its important Chinese ceramics and works of art sale in New York on September 21-22. The estimate on this stupendous piece from an American private collection is $400,000-$600,000. The sale features outstanding works from a number of important private collections of ceramics, cloisonné, lacquer, jade, scholar’s objects, textiles, and important classical Chinese furniture.
In New York Christie’s will mark Asian Art Week with nine auctions, six live; three online. Live sales begin September 19 with Japanese and Korean Art. There will be sales of South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art, The LJZ Collection of Chinese Jades; Mineo Hata: An Instinctive Eye spanning the geography of Asia; Marchant: Eight Treasures for the Wanli Emperor and Important Chinese Ceramics and Works of Art. The online sales are The Moke Mokotoff Collection, Arts of India and Arts of Asia.
The James Adam catalogue contains an eye watering selection of jewellery and watches from an Art Deco diamond bracelet designed by Austrian Imperial jewellers Kochert in 1929, later re-designed as a tiara by Bulgari in Rome in the 1950’s, to necklaces, bracelets, rings, dress rings, pendants, brooches and watches by makers from Rolex to Breitling. The fine jewellery and watches sale takes place on September 12 and is now on view in Dublin. The catalogue is online.
UPDATE: The top lot of the sale was an Art Deco diamond bracelet designed by Erwin Lang. It made €95,000 at hammer.
Freddie Mercury’s Yamaha grand piano sold for £1,742,000 at Sotheby’s last evening. Though slightly below estimate it was a record for a composers piano. He used it to compose some of Queen’s greatest hits. An original 15-page manuscript for their epic hit Bohemian Rhapsody, with the working title “Mongolian Rhapsody” and which reveals in its notes the different directions Mercury saw the track going in, was sold for £1.3 million. The first night of the Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own auction series saw bidders from 61 countries drive 93% of lots over their estimate, with Bohemian Rhapsody lyrics and Freddie’s Yamaha piano leading the sale. Sales on the opening night brought in £12.2 million in a white glove auction where every one of nearly 60 lots sold. A month long exhibition at Sotheby’s in advance of the sales drew nearly 140,000 visitors.
The second day of the sale on September 7 brought in £9.4 million.
In New York Christie’s will hold an online auction of five unique digital drawings by Keith Haring created on an Amiga computer in the mid-1980’s in an online sale from September 12-20. Keith Haring: Pixel Pioneer focuses on an artist who blended historically disparate cultures; he was highly celebrated for his achievements in public artwork while simultaneously a massively successful figure in the gallery world. A natural extension of his legacy for his art is to continue to bridge today’s artistic cultures – fusing the physical art world with the world of Web3.
Keith Haring was an early admirer and adopter of the digital age, even depicting the first Apple Macintosh computer in his work. In keeping with his signature style of bold lines and pop color, Haring’s Amiga drawings show the artist’s early interest and involvement in the medium, which has since become pervasive in commercial design and 21st-century digital art. To accurately preserve the natively digital material created on a now-vintage computer system, the Keith Haring Foundation has minted these five Amiga artworks — previously only viewable via floppy disks — on the Ethereum blockchain. For the first time, these unique digital drawings can now be collected, exhibited, and even printed.
THIS pencil on paper by Jack Butler Yeats titled A Girl Clings to a Young Man on the Beach is from a 1904 illustration for The Collegians. It is based on the 1829 novel by G. Griffin on a notorious murder of a woman in Co. Limerick in 1819. She had been secretly married to a local landlord. Dion Boucicault based The Colleeen Bawn on Griffin’s version of the tale. The signed work comes up at Morgan O’Driscoll’s current online sale of Irish art with an estimate of €3,000-€5,000. The auction runs until the evening of September 11 and the catalogue is online. Meantime there will be viewing in Skibbereen on September 7, 8 and 11.
Two fine sleepers emerged from the James Adam At Home sale in Dublin yesterday. This pair of 19th century marquetry side tables, estimated at €1,500-€2,500, made a hammer price of €10,000. Attributed to Edwards and Roberts a trade label showed the tables had been with David Zork, Chicago and were once in the collection of Rear Admiral F R Harris, New York.
An English School watercolour tondo portrait of a young woman also made €10,000 at hammer. The c1900 work was estimated at just €300-€500.
FREDDIE MERCURY: A WORLD OF HIS OWN has already drawn over 130,000 visitors to Sotheby’s in London. Overwhelmed by the response Mary Austin has decided to offer his beloved piano entirely without reserve. He composed Bohemian Rhapsody and countless other hits on this instrument. Free to the public and open seven days a week, the month-long show draws to a close at Sotheby’s in London tomorrow on what would have been Mercury’s 77th birthday. Elton John sent a message saying he missed Freddie to this day. “He was a wonderful friend – more full of love and live than anyone I’ve ever met – as well as a brilliant performer whose music has inspired and thrilled millions”.
In recognition of the strong friendship they enjoyed, proceeds from the sale of six items – some gifts from Elton to
Freddie, others reminders of their friendship – will be donated to the Elton John Aids Foundation.
There will be live auctions on September 6, 7 and 9 and online sales close on September 11.
This 1954 oil painting of the American jazz musician Miles Davis by James Dean – who died in a car accident the following year – will come up at Julien’s Hollywood Legends sale on September 6, 7 and 8. It is from a collection of more than 300 lots from the career collection of Easy Rider star Denis Hopper as actor, director and artist. There are only four known paintings by James Dean, the iconic star of classic films like East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant. This one is estimated at $10,000-$20,000 (€9,178-€18,356). Hopper’s collection includes a vintage three piece outfit worn by Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas. They met on the set of his 1971 film The Last Movie and married soon after in a union that lasted only eight days.