The Paris leg of ONE: A global sale of the 20th century at Christie’s on July 10 will be highlighted by an important rediscovery by Pierre Soulages. Estimated at €2-3 million the painting, executed in 1950, has been in the same private Australian collection since being first acquired in 1953 by the present owner’s father from the Galerie Louis Carré & Cie Paris, when it was included in a major exhibition that toured to Australia. It has been unseen in public since. Soulages celebrated his 100th birthday last December.
AN online sale of works on paper and prints at Christe’s until July 1 showcases the breadth of artistic styles of modern masters from the 1890s to the 1990s. More than 100 lots from intimate drawings to suites of artist prints, prices in Modern Edition range from £800 to £150,000 providing price points for collectors of all stages.
Wayne Thiebaud’s Four Pinball Machines, 1962 will come up as a central highlight at Christie’s ONE: A global sale of the 20th century, on July 10. With an estimate of $18-25 million it is expected to more than double the artist’s world auction record currently held by Encased Cakes, 2011, which made $8.5 million in November 2019.
Alex Rotter, Chairman of Post-War and Contemporary Art, Christie’s, remarked: “It is always a privilege to have the opportunity to present a painting that is categorically recognized as one of the best works that an artist has ever created, but in this case it is particularly exciting given its prominence within the canon of Pop art. This is precisely the case with Thiebaud’s Four Pinball Machines, 1962. In his centennial year, Thiebaud is among the most loved and revered artists of the 20th century, both for his extraordinary artistic talent and vision, but also for the delight that his paintings instill into anyone who stands before them. Four Pinball Machines is a painting that combines all of the qualities that people treasure about Thiebaud’s work: an iconic subject imbued with American nostalgia, the joyful palette and the masterly quality of the expressionistic brushstrokes. This work is the most important example by the artist in private hands“
Wayne Thiebaud – Four Pinball Machines, 1962. UPDATE: THIS MADE $19,135,000
Torse by Jean Arp was the the top lot at Christie’s Paris Hommage a Jean Arp, Collection Greta Stroeh online sale which has just finished. It made €394,000 at an auction where 75% of lots sold above estimate anbd 32% of registered buyers were new. The sale total was €1,176,625 in an auction which was 100% sold by lot and by value.
Change is gathering pace in the global art market. The restrictions wrought by pandemic has forced the market to adapt in all sorts of inventive ways. ONE: A global sale of the 20th Century is a new auction event at Christie’s on July 10. Using streaming technology Christie’s will hold a relay style auction of Impressionist and Modern, Post War and Contemporary art and design across four time zones. The aim is to create an engaging platform for selling major works of art to a global audience. With $20-30 million works like Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger Version F, Lichtenstein’s monumental Nude with joyous painting and Ed Ruscha’s Annie all available this amounts to a further blurring of the line between digital and live sales. There will be four consecutive sessions in Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York. It will replace New York’s 20th Century evening sale originally scheduled for June 22. In this brave new topsy turvy world Oliver Barker, an auctioneer at Sotheby’s, will take to the rostrum in London on June 29 to conduct an auction in New York. This digital auction, live streamed in high definition around the world, will allow bidders participate by phone or online, in a sale of Contemporary Art immediately followed by the Impressionist and Modern Art evening sale. These big ticket sales at Sotheby’s were originally scheduled for New York in May. Works can be viewed online from June 8 or by appointment at Sotheby’s Manhattan galleries. Francis Bacon’s 1981 “Triptych inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus” is estimated to make at least $60 million. Bacon’s theme of divine punishment is taken from Aeschylus’s most famous trilogy The Oresteia in which Clytemnestra murders her husband Agamemnon in revenge for the sacrifice of their daugher Iphigenia. When Orestes finds out he kills his mother to avenge his fathers death, provoking the avenging Furies who drive Orestes insane as a punishment. At times like this the highest levels of the art market tend to be best insulated against price drops largely because sellers at these stratified levels can afford to hold back. There was a 5% drop in the global art market last year, representing a $3.3 billion drop in sales over the stellar year of 2018. Digital sales by major auction houses so far this year have been highly successful with many lots going over estimate. Expectations are high.
Roy Lichtenstein – Nude with joyous painting. UPDATE: THIS MADE $46,242,500
Before television and the internet dominated news and entertainment, popular culture was propagated largely through illustrated magazines. Christie’s is running an online private selling exhibition, The Art of the Cover until June 19. It features some of America’s most loved illustration artists and explores how they created a visual narrative of modern American life in the first decades of the 20th century. Among the 23 lots are works by Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, George Hughes and Joseph Kernan. The price ranges from under $100,000 to over $5 million.
Garth Montgomery Williams (1912-1996) – Cover for Charlotte’s Web (a pair)
ONE: A global sale of the 20th century at Christie’s on July 10 is a new auction event offering Impressionist and Modern, Post-War and Contemporary art and Design. With streaming technology the first of its kind relay-style auction will take place in real time across the time zones from four of the art world’s major hubs: Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York. The sale will offer a range of exceptional works over four consecutive sessions led by principle auctioneers in each region, starting in Hong Kong.
The new format aims to create an adaptable, inclusive and engaging selling platform to present important works of art to global bidders. Presented to both in-person and online audiences, the event will capture the excitement and drama of the gala evening sale, while offering access regionally and the accessibility of the online platform. It will replace the New York 20th Century Evening sale previously scheduled for the week of June 22.
Pablo Picasso’s Les femmes d’Alger (version ‘F’), 17 January 1955 (estimate in the region of US$25 million) will highlight the group of works being sold in New York. It is from the series of fifteen canvases based on Eugène Delacroix’s masterwork Les femmes d’Alger executed between 13 December 1954 and 14 February 1955. Version F was painted around the halfway point in the cycle.
Pablo Picasso – Les femmes d’Alger (version ‘F’). UPDATE: THIS MADE $29,217,500
The onward march of the virtual world in this new era of online auctions, pent up demand and postponed sales cannot be overstated. Some of the rapid adjustments made in this time of pandemic are temporary, others will prove to be far more permanent.Just a few short months ago at the beginning of the year the idea of conducting a sale with no option to view physically would have been beyond the imaginings of many. Now they are not only commonplace, but working. At a time when traditional viewing is out of the question auctioneers are finding new and imaginative ways to sell.Take Christie’s, currently running a sale called The Collector online until June 1. This 264 lot auction with estimates from £200 to £35,000 is focused on bringing craft and design us in lockdown. To promote the auction of English and European furniture, silver, ceramics, gold boxes and works of art from the 17th to the 19th century, they have created a series of virtual viewing viewing rooms filled with the lots on offer. These virtual vignettes are designed to inspire the inner interior decorator unleashed by all this enforced time at home. Head of sale Paul Gallois commented: “During this unprecedented period in our lives, whilst a great many are spending more time than ever at home, interiors have become a major focus of comfort, familiarity and aesthetic expression.”
The largest D colour diamond ever offered online will come up at a sale at Christie’s from June 16-30. The spectacular diamond ring of 28.86 carats, D color, VVS1 clarity is estimated at $1-2million. This is the highest valued lot ever offered for sale online at Christie’s. The shape of the stone, the emerald-cut, is one of the oldest diamond shapes with stylistic origins tracing back to the 1500’s. During the Art Deco movement in the 1920’s the cut was modernised based on a shape initially created for emeralds and the style rose to popularity.
For the first part of 2020 Christie’s has witnessed unprecedented engagement from clients participating in online sales from over 150 countries with new registrants as high as 80% for select sales. In particular, strong results were achieved for Jewels Online sales with sell-through rates ranging from 89% through 99% with overall sale totals achieving double their pre-sale estimates.
The fifth largest piece of the moon known on earth – larger than any returned by the Apollo Programme – is on offer for private sale at Christie’s. Found in the Sahara Desert two years ago NWA 12691 is valued in the region of £2 million. Weighing over 13.5 kg the specimen is available for immediate purchase via Christie’s Private Sales.
Lunar meteorites arrived on Earth after having been blasted off the lunar surface by the collision with an asteroid or comet. All of the Moon’s large craters were created by such impacts. This particular meteorite was part of a large meteorite shower straddling the Western Saharan, Algerian and Mauritanian borders, responsible for nearly half of all known lunar meteorites. Approximately 30 different meteorites were collected, analysed, classified and assigned different NWA numbers in the belief they might be from different events and represent different lunar samples; but it has been determined that they all originate from the same lunar impact.
Christie’s will also offer for private sale a group of 13 aesthetic iron meteorites. Shaped by forces terrestrial and extra-terrestrial, this group of natural sculptures forms one of the most important collections of aesthetic iron meteorites in private hands. The collection, estimated in the region of £1.4 million, is available now.
NWA 12691 — The Fifth Largest Piece Of The Moon On Earth, Lunar Feldspathic Breccia, 13.535kg, Sahara Desert, Western Sahara
