Boat, Connemara by Lucian Freud comes up at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening sale in London on October 14 with an estimate of £750,000-£950,000. It is one of two works the artist produced while in Ireland for three weeks in August 1948. It appeared on the market for the first time in more than 50 years at Christie’s in 2012 with an estimate of £200,000-300,000 and sold for £657,250. It is being sold by the owner who acquired it then. UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD
(See post on antiquesandartireland.com for January 30, 2012)
The international autumn selling season gets underway in earnest this month. Major auction houses have been issuing previews of what to expect. Sotheby’s Contemporary Art evening sale in London on October 14, to coincide with the Frieze and Frieze Masters art fairs, will be headed by what they cheerfully describe as the most famous artwork of the 21st century, Banksy’s Love is in the Bin. Global news and instant art history happened when Girl with a Balloon was shredded just after the hammer came down on a million pound bid in 2018. It was then authenticated by Banksy and given a new title of Love is in the Bin. The new owner decided the wise thing to do was bank on Banksy and kept it. It now comes to market with an estimate of £4 million – £6 million (€4.67 million – €7.01 million).
Love is in the Bin by Banksy. UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £18.5 MILLION
This is the dawning of the age of minorities and in what will be an undoubted shot in the arm for black transgender women artists MGM resorts will sell their Picasso’s in Las Vegas on October 23 and build a new collection with a focus of diversity. The art market of the future will feature artists from a more diverse range of backgrounds, particularly from groups who have been discriminated against. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Because it Hurts the Lungs (1986) will be a highlight at Christie’s live and livestreamed 20th/21st Century evening sale including Thinking Italian in London on October 15. The title of the work is taken from a cryptic quote by Leonardo: “Why the thunderbolt kills a (man and) does not wound him, and if the man blew his nose he would not die. Because it hurts the lungs”. Winston Churchill, whose Tower at Koutoubia Mosque” sold for a record £8.3 million in March, will highlight Christie’s Modern British art evening auction in London on October 20. The Bridge at Aix en Provence was gifted to the Swiss paint manufacturer Willy Sax, who supplied Churchill with his artistic materials and would become a lifelong friend. It is now estimated at £1.5-£2.5 million (€1.75-€2.92 million).As part of a global expansion Bonhams has just opened its first dedicated saleroom on the Continent at Rue de la Paix in the heart of the luxury district in Paris. There will be a sale of Antiquities next Thursday (October 7). This will be followed one week later by a sale of Post War and Contemporary art.
Diego y yo is a quintessential example of Frida Kahlo’s singular approach to portraiture. Intense and emotional, this important work by the beloved and renowned artist is poised to shatter her current auction record of $8 million. When it comes up at Sotheby’s Modern evening sale in New York in November it may become the most valuable work of Latin American art ever sold at auction. The estimate for the final fully realised bust self portrait completed before her death in 1954 is in excess of $30 million.
The Modern Evening Sale, formerly the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale, will inaugurate a larger reorganisation of Sotheby’s General Fine Art evening sale with further details yet to be announced. Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s Chairman and Worldwide Head of Sales for Global Fine Art, remarked: “Frida Kahlo’s emotionally bare and complex portrait Diego y yo is a defining work by one of the few artists whose influence transcends the world of fine art to pop culture and beyond. To offer this portrait in our Modern evening sale in November heralds the recent expansion of the Modern category to include greater representation of underrepresented artists, notably women artists, and rethink how they have historically been valued at auction.”
Banksy’s shredded Love is in the Bin will return to Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries this October, at four to six times the price. Passing through a hidden shredder just seconds after the hammer fell on a million pound bid, the “nation’s favourite artwork” – Girl with a Balloon – seemingly auto-destructed in 2018 while hanging on the wall in Sotheby’s packed auction room. Capturing the world by surprise, this unexpected piece of performance art became instant art history, making it the first time a new work had been created in the course of an auction.
In the days that followed, the shredded artwork was granted a new certificate and date by Pest Control, Banksy’s authentication body, and given the new title, Love is in the Bin. The collector who had placed the record winning bid on Girl with Balloon decided to keep the new work.* Looking back on the event, she explains: “That surreal evening three years ago, I became the accidental – but very privileged – owner of Love is in the Bin. It has been an incredible journey to have been part of the story of how one of the most famous artworks in the world came to be, but now it is time to let the painting go.”
It will come up at the Contemporary Art evening auction at Sotheby’s in London on October 14 – this time with an estimate of £4-£6 million.
The 1937 poster for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the most expensively estimated lot at Sotheby’s online auction of original film posters. This was Walt Disney’s first feature film so it is a prized piece for any collector. It features the full cast with the dreamy castle in the background and is estimated at £12,000-18,000. The sale runs online from August 27 to September 7. The lots on offer demonstrate over 100 years of cinematic history from across the globe. There is promotional materials including posters, lobby cards, production stills and original artworks used to herald some of the world’s most iconic films with estimates from £300 upwards.
In a major push to focus on diversity and inclusion MGM Resorts plans to sell its Picasso’s. MGM Resorts and Sotheby’s will present a one of a kind marquee evening sale of Picasso masterworks worth millions live from Bellagio in Las Vegas on October 23. The world renowned entertainment company plans to re-shape its public art portfolio. The unique collaboration between Sotheby’s and MGM represents the first time Sotheby’s has hosted a marquee sale in North America outside its signature New York venue. It will feature a recreated version of the New York saleroom in Las Vegas. The sale will be broadcast around the world via a livestream viewable on Sothebys.com
Featuring 11 works that showcase the range and breadth of Pablo Picasso’s celebrated career, the auction includes a highly curated selection of paintings, works on paper, and ceramics that span more than 50 years of artistic output from 1917 to 1969. The highlight of the collection is Femme au béret rouge-orange ($20/30 million), one of Picasso’s defining portraits of Marie-Thérèse Walter. The artist’s muse and lover inspired many of his most iconic portraits of the 1930’s.
A question is posed by an online Sotheby’s sale running until August 12. Do you want merely to set the table for dinner or is a creative tablescape more to your taste? If the answer is the latter then “Dining IN” – running as two concurrent auctions in London and New York – is the sale to set your post lockdown celebrations underway. With content ranging from the 19th to the 21st centuries this auction celebrates the dining experience in all its formats. There is a focus on modern silver and ceramics, including Tiffany and Georg Jensen, Meissen and Versace porcelain. From Regency splendour to Victorian whimsy the creative teams involved have brought together a selection of silver, porcelain, glass, furniture and table linen to cater for a variety of tastes. Highlights include a George III silver soup tureen and a Martin Brothers grotesque stoneware spoon warmer from 1881 but there is enough of a selection here to let the imagination run riot.
A pair of silver sculptural candelabra by Patrick Mavros, Zimbabwe 1999 UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR £10,080
HIS time in power continues to fascinate generations later. Now Sotheby’s plans to commemorate the bicentenary of Napoleon Bonaparte’s death with an online auction in September dedicated to the Emperor whose extraordinary destiny continues to fascinate two hundred years after his passing. The sale will offer an extensive overview, with works spanning two centuries of art history and all fields: from 19th-century to contemporary art, sculpture, silverware, furniture, porcelain, jewellery and photography, as well as memorabilia of the Emperor and his loved ones.
Among the most exciting lots in the sale is an emblematic bicorne, a hat that has become inextricably linked with Napoleon’s image. Only nineteen bicornes have been authenticated as having belonged to the Emperor, of which this is one, with a number in the collections of museums worldwide.
The first published edition of James Joyce’s Dubliners comes up at an online sale of Fine Books and Manuscripts at Sotheby’s in New York until July 16. One of a number of works by Joyce in the auction it is estimated at $80,000-$120,000. It is one of approximately 746 copies bound in the publisher’s maroon cloth, with the very rare dust-jacket. A ticket pasted to the rear states that it was de-acidified in 1989. Only six copies in jacket have appeared at auction in the past forty-five years. Sotheby’s say that despite the restorations noted, this is an attractive, near-fine copy.
The sale offers first editions of A Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses by Joyce as well as a letter from Oscar Wilde to Aimee Daniell Beringer and a copy of Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance. The catalogue is online.
