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New York Fall Auction News and Highlights:
From Air Jordans to Botticelli
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The global pandemic has affected everyone in countless ways. Adjustments we are making to our personal, lives will stay with us long after a vaccine has been distributed. The auction world is having to make similar shifts. The business, which has historically been based on splashy viewing parties, global tours and in-person sales, had to drastically rethink its model when Covid upended the Spring 2020 sales. Now that we’re seven months into the pandemic, the auction world has found its footing, thanks to continued demand and impressive cutting edge technology.
What’s new are the online platforms for the sales (no bidders in the salerooms), high tech apps that make viewing (and bidding) easier and expanded categories. Christie’s offers an augmented reality experience right on their website. Using a mobile phone, viewers can see closeup details and even place the available works in their own homes. Key lots, including a Pollock drip painting and Picasso’s Femme dans un Fauteuil (1941), can be viewed in a 3D life-sized scale model in your home, just by using the camera app on your mobile phone. I can’t underscore how fun this technology is to play with. While it’s still glitchy and not perfectly accurate, seeing a Picasso on my living room wall was quite a thrill. See highlights from the 20th Century Sale (Oct. 6th) in augmented reality.
Christie’s also has a virtual tour feature, which lets you walk through their Rockefeller Center galleries. Navigating on your computer, you can click on a work of art to get more information and even sign in to bid.
Compared to the Spring sales, which were put together at the peak of the pandemic in New York and with extreme uncertainty about how successful a marquee online auction could be, the number of high value lots have increased significantly. At Christie’s, top lots include Willem de Kooning’s Woman (Green), 1953-55, which is part of the 20th Century Evening Sale. With an estimate of $20,000,000 - $30,000,000, it’s one of many star lots that indicate the company's belief that online and live-streamed auctions have the potential to match in-person auctions.
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Cy Twombly, Untitled (Bolsena), oil-based house paint, wax crayon, graphite and felt-tip pen on canvas, 78 ½ x 94 ½ in. 1969
Estimate $35,000,000 - $50,000,000
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Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Bolsena), 1969, has generated the most industry buzz. One of 14 large paintings Twombly painted in a two month span while working in solitude in the Palazzo del Drago north of Rome, the painting is both abstract and cryptically imagistic. It includes the artist's signature vigorous mark making and integrates paint, crayon, pencil and pen. Completed in the aftermath of the Apollo 11 mission, the series elegantly fuses painting, drawing and writing. Untitled (Bolsena) was formerly part of the Saatchi Collection and other works from this series are in The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and The Broad, Los Angeles. Provenance, always important when considering an acquisition, doesn’t get much better than that.
At Sotheby's, they are reaching out to new audiences by broadening traditional categories. Concluded on September 30th, the Cult Canvas online sale featured eight pairs of ultra-rare, artist designed sneakers. Cult favorites include Jeff Staples NYC ‘Pigeon’ Nike Dunk Low. Released in 2005 at Staple’s Lower East Side storefront, the crowd gathered was so large the police were called to keep things in order, and the New York Post ran a front page photo under the caption ‘Sneaker Riot.’ Staple’s lightly worn, size 10 shoes sold for $25,200 including buyer's premium.
Christie’s also got in on the sneaker action with an online sale in August titled Michael Jordan Game Worn and Player Exclusive Rarities. The eleven lot sale brought in just over $900,000, including buyers premium. A record was set for the Air Jordan 1 High “Chicago” - which sold for $615,000. The story goes that following Jordan’s NBA Rookie of the Year season, he participated in a Nike-sponsored game in Trieste, Italy. Wearing these exact shoes, Jordan scored 30 points. But the most memorable part of the game was when Jordan’s powerful dunk shattered the glass backboard into thousands of pieces. One of those pieces is still embedded in the sole of the left shoe.
And breaking news from Sotheby’s - in January they will auction Sandro Botticelli’s Young Man Holding a Roundel. Considered one of Botticelli’s finest portraits, the painting (estimate on request) will certainly be the highlight of the Masters Week sales in New York. And with over two months to hype the sale, we will all be hearing much more about the Early Renaissance masterpiece. This is further evidence that despite the pandemic, auction houses have high expectations that strong works can still trade. Whether sales are still online as of January, or fingers crossed, in person, the auction houses are making a push for relevancy, excitement and high priced sales.
-- Kara Aborn
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Kevin Sloan's paintings, Eightball Fascinator and Beehive Fascinator are perched above the fireplace in this Brookline family's game room. These whimsical paintings add brightness and levity to the formal paneling and architecture. Interior design by Acampora Interiors.
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Martha Richardson Fine Art, located at 38 Newbury Street in Boston’s Back Bay, focuses on American and European paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints. Exhibitions of note include John Wilson: Mexico, 1950-1956, Agnes Weinrich: American Modernist, Charles Hovey Pepper: Boston Modernist, Hilda Belcher: paintings, drawings & watercolors and Leon Kelly: paintings & drawings.
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In process photograph of Breathe Life 2 on the exterior of Madison Park High School, Boston, MA
As artists-in-residence at the MFA Boston, muralist Rob "Problak" Gibbs and illustrator Rob Stull are leading a multipart project inspired by the exhibition "Writing the Future: Basquiat and the Hip-Hop Generation." Highlighting inter-generational connections and the importance of youth participation in cultivating hip-hop culture, the project includes a community mural, a series of original drawings, a publication and map of street art around Boston, and a documentary video.
Gibbs, co-founder of Boston's Artists for Humanity, worked with students from Madison Park Technical Vocational High School and Artists for Humanity on concept and art direction to create a new outdoor mural on the exterior of Madison Park, one mile from the MFA Boston. The work, Breathe Life 2, centers on a girl enveloped by a giant bubble surrounded by books, ideas, art, and knowledge emanating from her backpack.
Stull, a comic book and graphic design professional who has worked for Marvel and DC comics, created a visual response to "Writing the Future" with a series of tribute drawing to four artists in the exhibition and one to Gibbs. The black-and-white drawings use the graphic language of comic book art to honor hip-hop culture.
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Left to right: Eamon Ore-Giron, Infinite Regress CXXXIX, mineral paint and flashe on linen, 72 x 72 in., 2020; Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Untitled Maze, mirror and reverse glass painting on plaster and wood, 53 1/8 x 53 1/8 in. 2015; Sonia Gomes, Untitled, mixed media on wood, 37 3/4 x 23 5/8 x 4 3/4 in., 1999; Arlene Shechet, The Crown Jewel, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, cast bronze, 94 x 32 x 19 1/2 in., 2020.
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- October 5 - 14, Christie's, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection
- October 6, Christie's, 20th Century Evening Sale
- October 7, Christie's, Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale
- October 8, Bonhams, Modern and Contemporary African Art
- October 8, Christie's, Impressionist & Modern Day Sale
- October 9, Skinner, Asian Works of Art
- October 14, Sotheby's, Master Paintings
- October 20 - 21, Christie's, Prints & Multiples
- October 22, Sotheby's, Important Prints & Multiples
- October 22, Swann Auction Galleries, Fine Photographs
- November 15, Grogan & Company, The Fall Auction
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Left to right: Phyllis Galembo, Brazil, Cibachrome print, 9 ¼ x 9 ¼ in. 1987, Estimate $3,000 - $5,000; Barbara Kruger (b. 1945), Untitled (Don't Shoot), digital print on vinyl, 96 x 94 in. Executed in 2013, Estimate $300,000 - $500,000; Horst P. Horst, Classical Still Life, platinum-palladium print, 20 ⅛ x 16 ¼ in. 1937, Estimate $15,000 - $25,000; Roy Lichtenstein, The Living Room (Corlett, 250), woodcut and screenprint in colors, 52 ⅛ x 66 in. 1990, Estimate $60,000 - $80,000.
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